Salesforce has called on the European Commission to block Microsoft's proposed acquisition of LinkedIn. The company said it could lead to unfair competition for Microsoft to have control of LinkedIn's data on over 450 million professionals and not share this with competitors in the market. In addition to competition concerns, it also raises issues for privacy regulators, Salesforce said.
Salesforce had also been reported to be interested in acquiring LinkedIn and more recently it has been linked to a bid for Twitter. Microsoft agreed the takeover of LinkedIn in June, and said the deal has already received clearance in some countries, including the US. It accused Salesforce of being the more dominant player in the CRM software market, an area where Microsoft is hoping that LinkedIn will help it compete better.
The competition concerns do no appear to have stopped the two countries from working together. Microsoft just announced that a beta version of Skype for Salesforce is now available, integrating the messaging service Skype for Business into Salesforce's business software.
