The company argues that control over LinkedIn's data would be anticompetitive.Microsoft made a splash earlier this year when it announced the largest acquisition in its history, signing an agreement to buy LinkedIn for US$26.2 billion.
But now, Salesforce is trying to convince the European Union to block the deal.
Salesforce Chief Legal Officer Burke Norton will argue to the EU's competition authority that Microsoft's control of LinkedIn's dataset following an acquisition would be anticompetitive.
EU competition chief Margarethe Vestager said in January that her agency would be looking directly at whether a company's use of data is bad for competition, and these complaints seem aimed squarely at those comments.
“Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of LinkedIn threatens the future of innovation and competition,” Norton said in a statement on Thursday . . .