Microsoft has paid $26.5 billion cash for LinkedIn, does that mean some good news for Outlook users?
$26.5 billion is a lot of money, even by Microsoft’s standards where mere millions are considered as petty cash or rounding errors.
Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see LinkedIn return to Outlook?
Outlook 2010 came with ‘Social Connectors’ which was hyped as a system for any social web site to connect into Outlook contacts via the People Pane. It started well with Facebook and LinkedIn both participating but now social connectors are dead. Microsoft itself dropped Facebook for a barely plausible reason while Redmond’s own Skype ignored the social connectors system entirely!
LinkedIn dropped support for Outlook social connectors in 2015 leaving the whole feature a dead letter except for in-house Microsoft services.
To justify $26.5 billion, Microsoft could start by resuming the LinkedIn social connector? It’ll probably be easier than the complex negotiations to buy the company.
