There are many reasons, in the technological field, for which a larger company acquires and absorbs another smaller company: to acquire talent, to eliminate a competitor, to obtain access and ownership of patents, to have its equipment, the its technology, its customers etc. The large companies that dominate the IT, electronics and web markets have accustomed us, in recent years, to acquisitions with a bang, of those that drive newspapers crazy, which sometimes make the scandal cry a bit, at other times instead they seem brilliant market hits. Let's see then a summary of the 10 most expensive acquisitions in the technological field in the last 10 years, starting from the last, astounding, operated by Facebook by taking Whatsapp for 19 billion dollars.
1) Microsoft bought Linkedin for 26 billion dollars, a record figure to expand in the business sector.
1 bis) Facebook Buy WhatsApp (19 Billion Dollars)
Facebook buying Whatsapp has taken more than just a mobile app, it has in fact acquired the phone numbers of 450 million registered users from all over the world. In addition, Whatsapp is an application that everyone loves, which killed the expensive traditional SMS leaving freedom to chat in real time for free for as long as you want, without even having to see advertisements.
2) Google Buy Motorola Mobility ($ 12.5 Billion)
Before Facebook made the deal of the decade, Google was the queen of the tech market after spending $ 12.5 billion with the acquisition of Motorola. However, Google has secured 17, 000 patents from the deal, which seemed decidedly overrated, including many of wireless communication technologies. Google then sold Motorola for $ 2.9 billion to Lenovo, making a loss, but still retaining all the patents that are what make Android a phenomenal mobile operating system.
3) HP Buy Autonomy ($ 10.3 Billion)
After buying Compaq for $ 17.6 billion in 2002, HP made another major acquisition of $ 10 billion in 2011 with Autonomy, a corporate software firm.
4) Microsoft Buy Skype ($ 8.5 Billion)
Skype is a program with a rather troubled history. Created in Sweden in 2002 by the same company that developed the Kazaa program, it was then acquired by Ebay for $ 3.1 billion in 2005. EBay, which did nothing with Skype, then sold in 2011 to private investors for 1.9 billions of dollars in 2009. Microsoft therefore acquired Skype for a very high figure, but counting that there are more than 800 million registered users and that there are about 8 million paying customers, the deal was not so bad. Skype is now pre-installed on all Windows PCs, smartphones and tablets.
5) Oracle Buys Sun Microsystems ($ 7.4 Billion)
After the purchase of Sun Microsystems, Oracle became the owner of Java, the Solaris operating system and MySQL (which had been bought by Sun for 1 Billion the year before and was considered a threat to Oracle's business). This acquisition was not a positive one for us because Oracle is a very business-oriented company that has cut every open source project losing even some of the brightest heads that made SUN great as the creator of Java himself James Gosling, the creator of XML, Tim Bray and the OpenOffice developers who went to LibreOffice. Note that in 2010, Oracle also sued Google for patent infringement for the use of Java on its Android platform, losing the lawsuit.
6) Microsoft buys Nokia (7.2 billion dollars)
Once the No. 1 mobile phone maker worldwide, Nokia, was acquired by Microsoft for more than $ 7 billion in mid-2013. Patents, mapping services, about 32, 000 employees and the brands of the Lumia and Asha smartphone models. The deal was criticized by some experts accusing Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (pictured above with ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer) of conspiring and selling off the Finnish company having a golden place in the Microsoft organization chart in return. .
Another theory, more credited, is that Nokia, having lost the train of smartphones and having given up on Android, was so mixed with Windows Phone and Microsoft that it had no choice but to become part of it. Today, Nokia has returned to an independent company, very scaled down compared to the past.
7) Google Buy Nest ($ 3.2 Billion)
This is not a deal that has had a lot of echo in Italy because Nest, a manufacturer of thermostats and smoke detectors, is not a famous company.
We will find out what Google will do with Nest very soon and it will surely amaze us with something that will have to do with home automation, that is smart home technologies.
8) Google buys Youtube (1.3 Billion Dollars)
In 2006 (not quite recent) what was perhaps the best deal ever in the technological field, the absorption of Youtube, the video portal, in Google.
9) Yahoo! Buy Tumblr ($ 1.1 Billion)
Since Marissa Mayer entered Yahoo's command booth in July 2012, she has started compulsive shopping for startups and larger or smaller companies such as RockMelt, Aviate and Tumblr. Tumblr is a blog platform widely used by young people that has 173, 400, 000 blogs inside it. Today Tumblr was resold by Yahoo to Verizon following the crisis that led Yahoo to transfer its ownership to Oath, a Verizon subsidiary.
10) Facebook buys Instagram ($ 1 billion) and Google buys Waze ($ 1.1 billion)
After all this, Facebook has taken Instagram, a photo-sharing application widely used especially in the USA.
Google instead, perhaps also to avoid that Facebook could take it, has acquired Waze, a GPS navigator app that has social functions and that competed with Google Maps.
In addition to these 10 we can also remember other historical acquisitions
- Ebay buying PayPal in 2002
- Adobe buying Macromedia and then Flash technology (in 2005 for 3.4 billion dollars)
- Intel bought McAfee in 2010 (for $ 7 billion)
- Dell bought Quest Software
