Oh dear
The kiss of death
Microsoft is to buy online CV endorsement factory LinkedIn for $26.2bn, it has just announced. The acquisition was announced by Microsoft on their website. The all-cash transaction values LinkedIn at $26.2bn, inclusive of LinkedIn's net cash. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner will remain CEO of it and report to Microsoft CEO Satya …
Dear valued LinkedIn customer,
First of all let me promise you that Microsoft will never to reveal your profile to any other of our trusted marketing partners. However we will require you to download and move your existing LinkedIn profile over to our new Microsoft Business Connect app. This is not only for your own convenience but also for the convenience of just about every single UK 'IT Specialist' Job Agency, who think they know all about the LinkedIn API.
Did I mention that all those really annoying agencies are now our trusted marketing partners? Oops, sorry about that, but hell, I bet you already knew that.
"... If you 'delete' data, you simply become the only person who can't see it..." Enlightening my day, Woodnag ;)
If not having conscience of the PetaTons of s#!t going through those tubes, could agree. Distillates is the fashion now, unless you're one of those wackos encrypting 'the handcrafts way'.
Ages ago I set up a disposable email address,
changed all my details
closed account
deleted email address from my hosting.
Linkedin is just full of nonsense and spammy. Maybe started as Social Networks for professionals, but just ended up rubbish.
I can't think what the MS strategy is.
It's not April 1st.
$27bn? Phew. Really? Wow. That eclipses the first three in this list of Monkey boy's acquisition blunders*.
Does this mean SatNad is trying to out Balmer, Balmer in one go by consolidating all his CEO ass hattery into one single massive value bonfire fuck up?
*Nokia, aQuantive and Online Services come to just over $25bn by my calc, over a billion short of Linked In. That list doesn't include the near miss that was the $35bn odd Ballmer offered for Yahoo! (pre ! tilt) but Jerry Yang turned down.
You need to watch Alice in Wonderland (the original one) a few times.
If an American (usually tech) company assets start to approach or god forbid exceed the value of their valuation it shows up on the radar of people like Icahn and Co. These guys come, fire the current management team, strip the assets, consume the cash pile and let various bits of flotsam remaining after that be carried by the stream.
So companies approaching this magic threshold work actively towards improving their valuation to assets ratio. The more common method is to buy back shares - this reduces the cash pile while increasing the stock price at the same time. Unfortunately, this does not always provide the expected results especially when your cash pile is abroad. In that case, some M&A for a ridiculous amount of money is used instead. As a result the company disappears off Icahn and Co radar for a while as its new asset to valuation ration makes it a non-target for a while.
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I rather dislike using corp-speak if it can be avoided.
But in this case... synergy???
Even allowing that Linkedin is fairly dominant in its niche, what benefit do either parties derive from being together? What does LI do for MS and vice versa? They seem orthogonal in concerns unless MS wants to build a "community" for itself. Kiss of Death, as mentioned, still seems to apply - LI is goona be "less cool" and 26B is a biggish chunk to faff on a very questionable buy.
Bet LinkedIn shareholders are :) $$$ :)
Nad is a hard guy to pin down. You think him smart: Win 10 giveaway, Linux mssql, BSD, net core.
Then he signs off on sheer stoopids that are way more visible: Win 10 install nagware & telemetry. And now this?