Business benefit?
What business benefit are Microsoft expecting to obtain by gaining ownership of LinkedIn?
Given that Microsoft are spending money and other resources on this acquisition, there must, in Microsoft's view, be a pretty good reason. I don't believe LinkedIn are directly profitable, so Microsoft must be valuing pretty highly some kind of business advantage they believe they can gain. Quite what that is, I don't know - the purchase price puts a 'value' on the data held on each individual, and presumably, Microsoft are looking to monetize at least that amount. I wonder how?
Buying an something externally developed and integrating it into Microsoft's offerings has been a successful strategy for Microsoft in the past - both PowerPoint and Visio were not initially developed by Microsoft, and MS-DOS itself was a rebadged QDOS/86-DOS, bought from Seattle Computer Products. The strategy was less successful with the purchase of Nokia's phone business.
Perhaps Microsoft are looking to integrate a LinkedIn client into the Office contacts function, and want control of the back-end?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
