Posted on 06/22/2019 9:03:38 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell
"You better consider the economic consequences of your social and political advocacy," Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff warned conservative states.
It was 2016 and the smirking bearded billionaire was fresh off his war against conservative states, most notably Indiana, which had dared to pass laws protecting religious freedom against his wishes.
The portly billionaire with a scraggly beard and a social justice brand that covers his ruthlessness in his business dealings responded by announcing a boycott of Indiana until it backed off religious freedom.
That same year, the Hillary Clinton backer also decided to threaten the state of Georgia.
"Salesforce’s Marc Benioff Has Kicked Off New Era of Corporate Social Activism," the Wall Street Journal gushed. “Salesforce's Benioff is brave to fight for social justice,” the Telegraph twittered.
"CEOs have the ability to use their businesses as a platform for change," Benioff had declared.
Change is supposed to happen via the ballot box, and the corporate coup against representative government that corporate activism represents is a fundamental threat to a free country.
“The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in America. Ban it,” Benioff had tweeted in 2018.
A year later, Salesforce, a dominant force in the CRM space, banned businesses that sell a variety of firearms from using its force. Salesforce’s war against the First Amendment had transitioned smoothly from a campaign against the Second Amendment using its power as leverage.
And that power and leverage are about to get a whole lot more so with the Tableau deal.
Estimates are that Salesforce’s acquisition of Tableau Software may increase its revenues from $13 billion to $22 billion. And, more significantly, make the social justice company even more dominant.
The $15.7 billion Salesforce bid will swallow up customers of Tableau, shut out competitors, and it’s expected that independent analytics may lose the ability to compete against this new behemoth.
The CRM (Customer Relations Management) market is already heavily consolidated with 10 vendors controlling 60% of the market. Salesforce dominates this market with a 25% share, up from 20% in 2016.
The anti-trust argument against Salesforce isn’t as straightforward as it would be against Google, Facebook or Amazon, which have far more dominant positions, but curiously it comes from Benioff.
In 2016, Benioff and Salesforce went to war, not just against conservatives, but against Microsoft.
Microsoft had just snapped up LinkedIn for $26.2 billion and Benioff, who had wanted the company, threw out all the stops trying to fight the deal, accusing his opponent of anti-competitive behavior.
“Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of LinkedIn threatens the future of innovation and competition,” Salesforce's legal honcho had argued. “By gaining ownership of LinkedIn’s unique dataset of over 450 million professionals in more than 200 countries, Microsoft will be able to deny competitors access to that data, and in doing so obtain an unfair competitive advantage.”
Benioff complained to Recode that a Microsoft executive was talking about combining all the data together to create "essentially a barrier to entry for other players in business productivity, where they have a monopoly or other markets".
That’s an argument against the Salesforce and Tableau deal.
Benioff’s bid for the EU to block Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn failed because, unlike Salesforce, its target had a very limited presence in the CRM marketplace. As the Commission noted, “Microsoft is a relatively small player in the customer relationship management market, where it faces strong competitors, such as Salesforce, the clear market leader, Oracle and SAP.”
A small player can’t be accused of trying to block innovation and competition. The biggest player can.
Indeed, the legal team representing Salesforce in the Tableau deal included lawyers from anti-trust.
Lately, Benioff has been quite enthusiastic about a government crackdown on the tech industry. "We are in a point in our industry where enough is enough, and we need to get the value straight with these tech companies,” he argued.
And he might be right.
But while Benioff wants to see a crackdown on his rivals and competitors, there’s no apparent reason why Salesforce should be exempted from the close scrutiny of regulators over its dominant position.
Benioff has urged that Facebook should be regulated “the same way you regulated the cigarette industry.” Why shouldn’t his own monstrous company be treated like the cigarette industry?
The radical billionaire is a major political donor. And some politicians will try to protect Salesforce.
Politico reported that Salesforce had funneled millions into Clintonworld, paying Hillary $450,000 for speeches, donating $6 million to the Clinton Global Initiative and hundreds of thousands to their foundation, and had lobbied the State Department, during her tenure, on its own business issues.
Salesforce and Benioff are savvy about getting what they want. But will Americans pay the price?
Meanwhile Benioff is signaling that he will double down on exploiting the power of Salesforce to serve his radical political agenda at the expense of ordinary Americans who are no match for his might.
The description for Trailblazer, his humbly titled new book, declares, “At Salesforce, the aim was to take decisions that were not only good for business, but also for society as a whole, and this book will show you how to make these positive steps. Benioff believes that, in future, the only businesses that will thrive are those that take an active role in making the world a better place.”
There are lots of ways to make the world a better place. Donate to charity. Clean up your block. But Benioff’s way of intimidating and crushing the civil rights of individuals has no place in America.
Regulations exist to prevent companies like Salesforce from gaining too much power over Americans.
The question is whether they will be applied or whether Salesforce will continue getting a pass while its victims, across the country, continue to suffer from the disproportionate power differential between Benioff’s billions and a small business owner in Indiana or a gun shop owner in Georgia.
Benioff remains confident that Salesforce can’t be stopped, but he’s been wrong before.
In 2016, he told the Huffington Post that he wasn’t worried about his candidate, Hillary Clinton, losing the election. “I don’t think there’s any way Donald Trump will be president.”
Donald Trump is president and as Salesforce embarks on its latest expansion, the administration has signaled that it is no longer going to give Silicon Valley a pass. Salesforce may not be the best known of San Francisco’s uglier dot coms, but those who have faced its abusive behavior know its name.
What’s at stake in the debate is whether the country is run by the voters or by Marc Benioff.
“Our government leaders tend to be a little weaker than they were, CEOs have to step up and be a little stronger and have a bigger voice,” Benioff had insisted.
As Salesforce grows more monstrous, its voice deafens the democratic process and it’s up to elected officials to show whether they’re going to be weak in the face of Benioff’s bullying or take a stand.
“The Salesforce CEO is a corporate bully,” Dan Forest, lieutenant governor for North Carolina, had warned.
Will the White House stand up to the bully?
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Salesforce has been a favorite over at CNBC Kramer for probably 10 years.
Many of Silicon Valley companies who have been hiding their uber-left beliefs are now going public as they have nothing to fear.
The GOP-e has no idea what is going on.
I tried to explain it to them in 2006-2008.
Its far, far worse than is being reported.
This is the real plan for “Net Neutrality” and why Silicon Valley was pushing for it.
In all of your reading and studying the present social/political/economic/Christian landscape, I am sure that you, too, have missed a trick or two, or brushed by a fact or event and then forgotten it.
It happens to the best of us. There is more to be known out there than any one of us can digest.
And I take for granted that there are numerous smartass people here on FReeper who have not yet achieved the tact it takes to assume that perhaps the person you are addressing is, in fact, well-informed and worth knowing as a friend.
No need to burn bridges. We need each other.
Thanks. I’m really getting some of my blind spots lit up today. Thanks again; you are a genuine FRiend.
“Pence”
My conservative memory works well.
He’s as sloppy and unkempt as Michael Moore.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff:
“You better consider the economic consequences of your social and political advocacy”
Their past will decide their future. And it does not look bright.
Exactly.
Yet, they still operate at a net loss
Or bearded fat CEOs who look like an asshole.
I am not taking up for Pence at all, but if I understand what SalesForce is and does, Pence had a lot to worry about beyond the CEO of SalesForce.
Recently I read a story about SalesForce. That story explained what they do for the retail industry. If the story is correct, they manage inventory, sales, restocking purchases and about every other financial activity of a business subscriber.
If I understand what they do, they are the reason that retailers such as Northern Tools can do what they did for me this morning. I am interested in an item they carry and I wanted to know if the local store has it on the shelf. When I put in my zip code, the answer came up that they do have one on the shelf and within a 100 mile radius there were at least 20 stores listed with one in stock.
No, I did not count them but it did look like that many.
SalesForce is so deep into the retail market that any store who gets bumped will spend thousands of dollars and many man hours getting something set up to replace them.
Remember when linux first began its entry into the desktop market? Microsoft had hundreds of applications that were not available in linux. Software developers were not allowed to write software for linux if they were selling to Microsoft. It took me a long time to get a satisfactory pedigree program for my animals. A long time to get one for my personal finances.
Financial programs were available for the really big guys at a cost of thousands of dollars, but nothing like the personal programs for individual use.
Now there are some very good ones.
Now we can do anything on Linux that we can do on windoze, but it took years to get here.
It looks like SalesForce will fight its competition the same way as windoze....force vendors to write only for SalesForce.
I deal with several companies that do it all on paper...absolutely nothing on a computer.
But the chain stores are built on instant gratification.
My only point is that Pence could be excused for losing his nerve, although he made a big mistake in doing so.
SalesForce is extremely dangerous. Linked up with the banks, credit card companies and lending institutions they can destroy any business and any activity and the story I read stated that to be the goal.
Fishing, hunting, auto racing, books.....who knows?
Thanks Louis Foxwell.
The firing squads on Free Republic are, regrettably, often circular.
Exactly.
Let conservative states pre-emptively ban SalesForce. Certainly do not allow any contracts or licenses with their own state governments.
Switch government over to Oracle, SAP or Microsoft Dynamics.
Hah — that’s pretty good.
When I hear him speak, I think faux conservative Christian. Reminds me of Romney ab bit.
“”” It took me a long time to get a satisfactory pedigree program for my animals. “””
Name of the program please? I run linux and we’ll be raising meat goats soon. I’m undecided as to whether I want to just take them to the sales barn or get really fine animals to start with and focus on breeding and selling to private individuals as purebred.
Either way, I have to keep track of breeding.
Looking to kill business with states and businesses you depend on for your own business success is certain death.
It's only a matter of time.
This fat rich ugly fascist is some kind of unAmerican bastard, eh?
Karma’s gonna be harsh on him.
Bttt.
5.56mm
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