LinkedIn, a G Suite customer, may soon switch to Office 365

Last year, Microsoft paid $26 billion to purchase LinkedIn, its biggest acquisition to date. But if you thought that the Redmond giant would do everything it could to assert its power over the professional social network, you’re wrong: CEO Satya Nadella promised LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner that the company could continue to operate independently.

That doesn’t mean that Microsoft doesn’t plan to integrate data from the professional social network into its own products though: as we previously reported, Microsoft want to leverage LinkedIn’s data to improve its CRM products, but you can also expect to see more integrations with Windows 10, Outlook, the Office suite and more.

But while Microsoft is planning to improve its own products with LinkedIn’s data, the social network may soon be forced to move its 10,000 employees from Google’s G Suite to Microsoft’s Office 365 according to Business Insider. However, it’s not for the reasons you may imagine:

According to someone close to the company, this change is not being driven by demands from Microsoft that LinkedIn switch to Office 365. We hear that Google is the one that isn’t thrilled to have such a large G Suite customer owned by Microsoft. Google doesn’t want to be put in a position where it’s sharing product road map and other tidbits with a company its biggest rival, this person tells us.

Google declined to comment, but Business Insider added that “employees are increasingly hearing that this change may be coming soon.” If this change does happen, LinkedIn wouldn’t be the first social network to switch to Microsoft’s cloud productivity suite. Last year, Facebook announced that its moved its 13,000 employees to Office 365, which led many to comment that Microsoft had become cool again in the Valley.

Thanks Marc for the tip!