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Comment by blondie9x | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft has bought Linkedin, Skype, Bungie, Bethesda, Github etc. Is this what tech has become? The titans are buying up everything and tech becomes 5 companies in the US and 3 or so in China? Feels better to have a wide breath of companies for healthy competition and innovation.

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As it turns out, all those dystopian novels and films set in the future with one or two mega corporations controlling everything were right all along.

These companies can't live off VC cash forever. Getting acquired by Google / Microsoft is usually part of the business plan.

Then perhaps (SV startup?) companies should start thinking about creating profitable businesses in the first place instead of living on borrowed money?

Should. Don't.

They have accumulated a cash war chest that is so big it's a liability... their way to deal with that is to acquire and offset costs and taxes which enables them to get bigger faster.

The system is working. but only really for the biggest.

Now they just need to buy arm manufacturer and biochem company and they will be proper cyberpunk zaibatsu.

Microsoft acquiring those companies doesn't really hurt competition.

Tech M&A (and particularly the list of examples you pick) is often driven by the desire to acquire talent, technology or capabilities that you don't already have, expanding the scope of the company. If you can integrate the acquired asset with your existing offerings, the theory goes, you will be able to create something greater than the sum of the parts.

It is also used by companies to acquire talent they used to have, but lost.

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