LinkedIn gets infected by Microsoft

So today I receive an email from LinkedIn, perhaps you got this too:

Dear Mark,

At LinkedIn, we're always looking for ways to simplify and improve your experience – helping you be more productive and successful. This sometimes means removing features that aren't heavily used by most of our members to invest in others that members tell us offer greater value.

As such, we're removing the Premium search filters feature that allowed you to apply additional advanced search filters to find people on LinkedIn. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

If you'd like to continue using this feature, it's available on our Recruiter Lite platform, which you can now enjoy for a free trial period of 3 months*. LinkedIn Recruiter Lite is a product we launched a couple of years ago and is targeted at talent professionals - it lets you find, contact, and track top candidates with its advanced search tools and note taking capabilities.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions regarding your Premium account.

The LinkedIn Premium Team

If LinkedIn is all so fired up to make my experience (and yours) better, why are they taking away away features? Most companies when they say they are going to "improve" things for you add features. I guess the part that is the real deal on this is... simplify. LinkedIn want's to simplify my life by charging me more to upgrade to a version of LinkedIn that I don't want and didn't need.

Last time I looked, LinkedIn was having a pretty good year. Revenues are up and oh, Microsoft is in the processing of acquiring them. Maybe this is the real crux of the issue. In an effort to squeeze more from the end user, LinkedIn seems to have followed the path that Microsoft took us down - you pay for everything.

Will I have to upgrade now? Probably albeit begrudgingly. Maybe if enough users band together, we can get them to rethink this policy?

LinkedIn, you messed up, again.