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Microsoft reportedly reached out to Pinterest to discuss a possible deal. This means that the tech company was trying to buy the image sharing and social media service platform, and this was confirmed by sources who have knowledge on the matter.
MS’ offered to acquire Pinterest
The Financial Times reported that Microsoft Corp. made an offer to Pinterest a few months ago, but this only came to light this month. If pushed through, the deal will be Microsoft’s biggest acquisition thus far.
It was said that the tech giant had been continuously acquiring films as a strategy to create a portfolio of dynamic online communities that could operate aside from the company’s Azure cloud computing program.
Pinterest is currently running on Amazon Web Services, which serves as its base. The company has over 320 million users and has a market value that skyrocketed by more than 600% throughout the pandemic when everyone was staying at home.
Last week, Pinterest reported another growth as the company recorded 100 million new users by the end of 2020. This is a 76% growth in year-over-year quarterly earnings. As per Fox Business, the increase can be attributed to the heightened engagement on social media as people shift to virtual interactions when the pandemic hit.
The progress of the Microsoft-Pinterest deal
While the acquisition talks have been confirmed, it was clarified that the negotiation is not in progress now. The talks have stopped and remained inactive, and it is not clear how long the two companies had the discussion.
Most probably, the deal did not push through because Pinterest previously shared that it prefers to stay as an independent company. Forbes reported that Microsoft actually expressed its interest to buy Pinterest last year around the same time when it also tried to buy TikTok.
However, the company’s bid to acquire the Chinese video application failed when Walmart and Oracle were able to win in the negotiations to buy. Meanwhile, Microsoft has already purchased a number of companies in recent years, and this includes the $26 billion takeover of business and employment-oriented online service called LinkedIn, GitHub, and Minecraft.
