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When big tech buys small tech — Benedict Evans

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Acquisitions are a big part of the discussion around competition in tech today, and a big set of questions. It’s easy to say that we wouldn’t let Amazon buy Zappos or Google buy DoubleClick again, but everyone’s favourite puzzle is Instagram. Facebook bought a pre-revenue startup with 13 staff, and it’s now commonplace to say that this was anti-competitive, and a failure of regulation, but at the time a lot of people thought that buying this thing for a billion dollars of money was insane. The Instagram acquisition was at least reviewed by regulators, but a frequent talking point now is that in recent years there have been hundreds and hundred of other acquisitions by giant tech companies that didn’t get any scrutiny at all, far less get blocked, and that this represents a systemic regulatory failure. Responding to this, earlier this year the US FTC ordered Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft to provide data on every single acquisition they made from 2010 to 2019, and publish

When big tech buys small tech Acquisitions are a big part of the discussion around competition in tech today, and a big set of questions. It’s easy to say that we wouldn’t let Amazon buy Zappos or Google buy DoubleClick again, but everyone’s favourite puzzle is Instagram. Facebook bought a pre-revenue startup with 13 staff, and it’s now commonplace to say that this was anti-competitive, and a failure of regulation, but at the time a lot of people thought that buying this thing for a billion dollars of money was insane . The Instagram acquisition was at least reviewed by regulators, but a frequ

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