
The largest acquisitions by Big Tech companies - finphil
https://nuadox.com/post/188345493742/big-tech-acquisitions-infographic
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fortylove
It's crazy to think that Amazon acquired Whole Foods for less than Facebook
acquired WhatsApp. Not on the list, IBMs 34b acquisition of Red Hat.

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ignoramous
WhatsApp essentially displaced Facebook as a Social Media platform of choice
whilst also spelling doom for SMS, and VoIP in one fell swoop. WhatsApp, if it
was an independent company like Larry Page pleaded with them to be, would have
been the next $100B tech company. I feel the founders cashed out when there
was no need for them to, plus they couldn't exercise the autonomy they were
promised post-acquisition.

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cstejerean
And how would they have monetized WhatsApp for it to be worth $100B?

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dumbfoundded
Probably like WeChat, through a bunch of integrations with service providers &
payment providers.

IE, text to get a pizza.

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altmind
MS buying aQuantive for 6.3Bil and then doing nothing with their products and
resources always bogged me on how un-resourceful corporations can be.

6.2Bil of this acquisition was written off in 2012, 5 years after the
purchase.

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chirau
I would love to hear people's opinions on what was the best acquisition for
each of these companies...and perhaps the worst too.

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opportune
I think YouTube and Instagram have probably been the best so far. LinkedIn is
also very strong but because it was sold for such a high price it can’t 100x
the way YouTube and Instagram likely have

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nostrademons
Android was also pretty key for Google.

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RocketSyntax
YouTube, Twitch, and IG were all wayyy too small. I guess Snap's no go
decision on acquisition seems less silly now.

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jedberg
That's really hard to judge, because a lot of those company's growth came
after their acquisition, and we have no idea how much the parent company
contributed to that either through marketing and driving traffic, and/or
through capital resources and/or through talent.

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gkolli
Surprising, based on how large Apple is, its acquisitions aren't as large as
other tech companies. Thoughts?

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rm_-rf_slash
It appears that Apple prefers to purchase IP to integrate with their existing
product lines (like siri), rather than to buy up competitors for the purposes
of horizontal integration (like Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp).

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psds2
No mention of Dell spending $67bn to acquire EMC and with it VMware.

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csomar
Link to the original article ([https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-big-five-
largest-acquis...](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-big-five-largest-
acquisitions-by-tech-company/)) which has more data. The current link serves
no purpose.

