Microsoft’s President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith has today announced that the Microsoft-LinkedIn deal has been cleared by the European Commission. As a result, Microsoft has now obtained all of the regulatory approvals needed to complete the acquisition, and the deal will close in the coming days.
Smith’s announcement confirms that Microsoft has “formalized several commitments regarding Microsoft’s support for third-party professional social networking services” — in other words, the company is supposedly to take steps to ensure that LinkedIn competitors don’t get completely disadvantaged on Microsoft platforms.
“As part of our discussions with the European Commission, we formalized several commitments regarding Microsoft’s support for third-party professional social networking services. For example, we’ve committed that for the next five years:
- We’ll continue to make our Office Add-in program available to third-party professional social networking services. The Office Add-in program enables developers to integrate their services into Microsoft Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel, providing users an enhanced experience using Office. As we continue to improve this program, these improvements will be available to third-party professional social networking services.
- We’ll continue to make promotional opportunities in the Office Store available to third-party professional social networking services.
- We’ll ensure that IT administrators and users can customize their Office experience by choosing whether to display in the user interface the LinkedIn profile and activity information that may be integrated in the future.
- If we develop a LinkedIn application or a tile for Windows PCs and include it in Windows, we’ll allow PC manufacturers to choose not to install them on their Windows PCs in the European Economic Area, or EEA. Similarly, we’ll ensure that users can uninstall the application and tile if they wish. We also won’t use Windows itself to prompt users to install a LinkedIn application, although it can remain available in the Windows Store and be promoted in other ways.
- In the EEA we won’t enter into agreements with PC manufacturers for pre-installation of a Windows LinkedIn application or tile that would favor LinkedIn on an exclusive basis and thereby bar the distribution of competing professional social networking services.”
In June, Satya Nadella and Jeff Weiner, the CEOs of Microsoft and LinkedIn, announced their shared vision for bringing together the world’s leading professional cloud with the world’s leading professional network. Just ten days after they announced this combination, voters in the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. And roughly five months after that, a tumultuous presidential election campaign in the United States came to a close. On both sides of the Atlantic, it has become increasingly apparent that many people feel left out and unable to participate in the economic growth and opportunities created by the rising digital economy.
Smith continued,
“While technology tools are not a panacea for current economic challenges, we believe they can make an important contribution. Microsoft and LinkedIn together have a bigger opportunity to help people online to develop and earn credentials for new skills, identify and pursue new jobs, and become more creative and productive as they work with their colleagues. Working together we can do more to serve not only those with college degrees, but the many people pursuing new experiences, skills and credentials related to vocational training and so-called middle skills. Our ambition is to do our part to create more opportunity for people who haven’t shared in recent economic growth.
With the combination of Microsoft and LinkedIn, we can take new steps to help people learn added skills and seek better jobs.”
