Microsoft Won, But Who Else Wanted LinkedIn?

Microsoft picked up LinkedIn for a cool $26.2 billion last month, and it was a good snag. Not only was the deal the largest acquisition at Microsoft so far under CEO Satya Nadella's reign, but the company successfully managed to hold off a number of other potential suitors from picking up the business-themed social network instead.

As Recode reports, a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange commission indicates that there were up to five companies in total all vying for LinkedIn. One was definitely Salesforce, and that probably gave Microsoft the biggest competition for the purchase. They both entered into a bidding war for LinkedIn fairly early on in the discussions, jumping from a price of around $160 per share to Salesforce's final offer, $85 in cash and a portion of Salesforce stock that worked out to just around $200 per share. Microsoft ended up winning with its bid of $196 per share, straight cash.

Facebook is also rumored to be one of the parties that was interested in LinkedIn. It's unclear if Facebook even managed to make a bid, but the company ultimately dropped out of talks around April—likely due to the worry that the cost for LinkedIn would be too great. (And it only took around six days for the potential acquisition to go from the "let's chat about it" to the "Zuckerberg says no" stage.)

Google appeared to have a greater chance to pick up LinkedIn, as representatives had met up with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner in mid-March after both Microsoft and Salesforce had expressed interested in acquiring LinkedIn. According to Business Insider, the initial talks went well enough that Google representatives were interested in setting up future meetings to discuss a potential Google acquisition of the company. Google made its interest official on April 4, but bowed out just shy of one month later—preferring instead to go for a "commercial partnership" if LinkedIn was interested, rather than a formal acquisition.

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We don't yet know who the fifth party in the potential purchase is, nor have any rumors surfaced up as to who it might be. We're also curious if any other companies were also interested in LinkedIn—sharks in the Silicon Valley waters, given LinkedIn's attractive stock price at the time.