Salesforce not only was trying to secure a deal to acquire LinkedIn, but drove up the price in a bidding war that forced Microsoft to pay an almost 50 percent premium on the social network’s market capitalization, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
The San Francisco-based customer relationship management vendor saw the potential benefits of adding the professional networking site to its portfolio of cloud-based sales, marketing and service management products, but ultimately couldn’t top the $26.2 billion offered by the world’s largest software company.
