Salesforce made an offer on LinkedIn

Salesforce has also made an offer for LinkedIn, the director of that company says. The social media eventually reached an agreement with Microsoft, which will pay $26.5 billion for the service and allow LinkedIn to operate as an independent division.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff doesn’t tell Recode how much it would have paid for LinkedIn. Microsoft puts on the table the highest amount it has ever paid for an acquisition. Until now, Skype was the largest acquisition Microsoft made, for around eight billion dollars.

Salesforce wanted LinkedIn because of the recruitment division, where much of the revenue comes from. The company itself is mainly active in business services. Microsoft was not too long ago interested in acquiring Salesforce, but the talks about it broke down, according to Recode, because of the conditions for an acquisition.

Microsoft and LinkedIn announced the deal earlier this week. The acquisition is expected to go through by the end of this year, if shareholders and regulators agree to the acquisition.