SAN RAMON, California: Business software pioneer Salesforce.com is buying work-chatting service Slack for US$27.7 billion in a deal aimed at giving the two companies a better shot at competing against longtime industry powerhouse Microsoft.
Slack in July filed a complaint in the European Union accusing Microsoft of illegally bundling Teams into Office 365 in a way that blocks its removal by customers who may prefer Slack. In a prepared statement, Benioff touted the combination as"a match made in heaven" that will"transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world".Advertisement
Salesforce is using its stock to pay for roughly half of the Slack purchase, with the rest being covered with some cash, with some of the money being borrowed during a time of extraordinarily low interest rates. "This is a stellar exit strategy for Slack," said Kate Leggett, an analyst at Forrester Research."Microsoft Teams is eating Slack's lunch."Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield will be hoping this sale works out better than when another company he started, photo sharing service Flickr, was sold to Yahoo 15 years ago. Flickr got lost in the shuffle at Yahoo amid years of turmoil before it was finally sold again in 2018 to SmugMug.
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