In a chat with Microsoft President Brad Smith, he stated that the company has no intentions on blocking data from LinkedIn to rival Salesforce after Microsoft acquires the business-themed social networking service.
Salesforce, which engaged in a bidding war with Microsoft over LinkedIn that it lost earlier this year, is now asking the European Commission to look into the deal. It claims that Microsoft could block access to LinkedIn's database of users from competitors like itself. However, speaking with Independent.ie (via MSPU), Smith denied that would happen:
"It is not something that we have any intention of doing," he said. "The LinkedIn data is public today and we want to make that data useful in lots of new ways."
Microsoft has proposed acquiring LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. The deal has already been approved by regulators in the U.S and other regions, but has yet to be cleared by the European Commission. On that topic, Smith stated today:
"The European Commission has naturally been reviewing with us the whole range of issues," he said. "They ask lots of questions as they always do and as they always should. I think they have good questions. I think we have good and clear answers to their questions, so from my perspective this is an acquisition that is going to promote competition."
Microsoft hopes to close the LinkedIn deal by the end of 2016.
