The Future of Business?

[Aeiper]

I seems that many big companies are buying smaller companies (which are also pretty big!). With Facebook buying Instagram, Yahoo buying Tumblr, and Yahoo attempting to buy another company, it seems that the future of starting a business is going to be selling to the "big guys". Sooner or later, I believe that there will only be a couple of companies (like in Wall-E) that will dominate the others. What do you think?

[hardwaresofton]

It might be better if I respond to this in two ways:

1) If you're a libertarian: The government will hopefully keep it's hands off and the market will adjust -- as big companies take over smaller ones and make mistakes, new competitors will arise when they take measures that people don't like (as in, if Yahoo does something bad enough with Tumblr, someone will make a new, even MORE hipster Tumblr alternative)

2) If you're not a libertarian: Responsibly upheld Sherman anti-trust and monopoly laws are in place to stop things like that, hopefully. (see Google in just about every court appearance in the last few years)

[michaelpinto]

You should read up on Nassim Nicholas Taleb's concepts of fragility and antifragility. Taleb feels that over the long run the biggest of the big will have fragility, and thus tend to fail.

Another thing to keep in mind is that what you're reading about in fact represents only a small amount of what is going on in business. There are plenty of small companies that aren't being sold to big companies, and quite a few big companies can be doing badly at any time. In tech just take a look at HP.