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Salesforce.com Inc. said it would press regulators in the U.S. and Europe to block Microsoft Corp.’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn Corp., arguing the deal would hurt competition by giving its business-software rival too much control over the social-networking company’s vast pool of data.
Salesforce’s CRM, +0.49% public broadside against the deal on Thursday came three months after it lost a bidding war for LinkedIn LNKD, +0.29% to Microsoft. Both companies’ interest in LinkedIn centers on data generated by its members, who typically maintain career résumés on the site. LinkedIn claims 450 million members in more than 200 countries, including 106 million monthly active uses.
Burke Norton, Salesforce’s chief legal officer, said owning LinkedIn would give Microsoft MSFT, +0.31% an unfair competitive advantage because it could block rivals’ access to the data on its membership. He said the deal also raises “data privacy issues” that Salesforce thinks U.S. and European Union authorities should scrutinize.
An expanded version of this article appears on wsj.com.
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