Why did Microsoft acquire LinkedIn? It's been 10+ years since Microsoft acquired LinkedIn (June 2016) and I'm still curious what was going on in the MS executive board that drove them to that decision. Microsoft is primarily a software company and does have a social media presence (unlike Google or Meta). I haven't seen any large synergies come out of the acquisition either, maybe the subscriber data is useful somewhere but I don't see it. Just curious |
They locked me out when I changed my profile picture, and started deleting posts and comments prior to deleting the account itself.
Back in the mid 2010's my biz dev guy and I practically lived inside LinkedIn, it was one of the best resources for enterprise sales that there was and LinkedIn was making money hand over fist serving that market.
I mean, Microsoft wanted to take over the world with Windows in the 1990s but today with Azure they are happy to sell you an instance with Windows or an instance with whatever Linux you like. It's not clear at this point that Microsoft takes products like Windows or Office seriously in 2026 except as places to stuff in Microsoft Copilot.
The story of the Windows UI post Win 8 has all been about turning away from native apps to the web and webviews. Like it used to be new versions of Windows came out and we got new widget sets, after Microsoft got flexbox and grid into CSS it seems Microsoft's answer to "how do I make a Windows app?" is "use Electron."