Satya Nadella’s biggest success as Microsoft CEO; Inside GeekWire’s Great Race; Number of the Week

Satya Nadella at Microsoft Ignite in 2016, two years after serving as Microsoft CEO and a few months after the company announced the acquisition of LinkedIn. (GeekWire file photo / Kevin Lisota)

When Microsoft announced the acquisition of LinkedIn for more than $ 26 billion five years ago, there has been a lot of skepticism, and for good reason.

After all, Microsoft was a company known for taking heavy write-offs when its largest acquisitions (aQuantive, Nokia, etc.) didn’t live up to expectations.

But that was then, and after becoming the venerable software giant’s new leader, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took a different approach, sticking to Microsoft’s strength in business technology by grabbing the popular corporate social network.

It remains the biggest deal in Microsoft history, and with that in mind, it is now considered Satya Nadella’s greatest achievement as Microsoft CEO.

This week we learned that LinkedIn has joined Microsoft’s ranks of $ 10 billionthat crosses this threshold in annual sales for the first time.

Unfortunately, we still don’t know for sure if LinkedIn is a profitable business as Microsoft stopped disclosing LinkedIn operating profits a few years ago. But based on the company’s underlying economics and how LinkedIn’s bottom line has moved up ahead, it’s a relatively safe bet that it will be in the black.

We discuss the LinkedIn deal five years later in the second segment of this week’s GeekWire podcast.

My colleague John Cook and I are back at the GeekWire studio in our Seattle suburb of Fremont for the first time in 18 months with podcast producer Curt Milton.

We’ll start with a behind-the-scenes discussion of GeekWire’s Great Race II, and conclude with a new role, the number of the week, that of The latest results from our local coffee giant.

Listen up, or subscribe to GeekWire on any podcast app.

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