More money and a sense of crisis induce the tech giant's shopaholic

In response to a recent big-money takeover of technology giants, a commentary in the Wall Street Journal said the strong financial strength of technology giants and a strong sense of crisis had triggered frequent acquisitions.

The article argues that Facebook's 2 billion dollar acquisition of virtual reality device start-ups Oculus the spotlight on a high-risk competition between technology giants, the ultimate goal of which is to maintain dominance in the digital realm of rapid change.

The Wall Street Journal shows a picture of the four Giants ' takeover battles (each of which represents the acquisition of an event, and the greater the circle's radius represents the higher the amount of acquisition):

As can be seen from the figure, one of the biggest acquisitions and investment boom since the end of the dotcom bust in the late 1990 was coming.

Why did the technology giant start the war? There are three main reasons for this analysis:

1 money

The Big Four Giants, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon, are worth more than $1 trillion trillion. The high valuations of Facebook, Google and so on, and the high cash flow from Apple and Amazon, have kept them bulging, with a strong economic base. According to Fred Wilson, the cheap-money environment remains unchanged as low-interest loans pour into the market, leading the Giants to pay more for companies that can grow fast. FB and Google, the big four, are particularly profligate because of soaring share prices and the founder's preference for preferred shares, while Apple and Amazon, while slightly low-key, are using core revenue to open up new areas of video and payments.

2) Fear

As a former subversive, the four giants have a strong sense of crisis, full of the last generation of giants because satisfied with the current achievements and can not keep pace with the change of rhythm finally squeezed the throne of fear. And now that the birth of the new giant is getting shorter, it will take decades, and now it will only take 10 years (Facebook) and the future may be shorter. Mr Zuckerberg, for example, is acutely aware that the past giants have been relegated to the status quo, and that Facebook's huge acquisitions were designed to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy of the year.

3 Ambition

The first four Giants were born from the original desire to conquer the world, this desire will only become more and more expansive. FB is already not satisfied with the desktop customer base, but also want to collect more information about customers for advertising; Google is not content with providing information, and wants to expand into areas such as communication, entertainment, and transportation, a recent CEO Larry page has mentioned at TED, The fundamental reason why many companies do not have an inheritance is to miss the future.

All giants understand the consequences of not adapting quickly to change. Yahoo lost its search to Google after losing its strength, and Microsoft missed the smartphone for 10 years. Microsoft and Google reacted differently to Apple's smartphone era, and the results were vastly different. Facebook has also been slow to respond, but has been trying to catch up with the takeover Instagram. For the next possible wearable technological revolution, Facebook and Google have reacted in advance to the Oculus and nest acquisitions, respectively.

Behind these acquisitions is the desire to control the entire ecosystem as much as possible. The idea is that the ecosystem is actually called a platform, with the motivation to collect as much data as possible, and the ultimate goal is the same: making money-either by placing ads or by letting users buy things. Understanding the user is the key to all of this, to understand the user's everything, including gender, age, hobbies, personality (see through mobile phone calls record predictable character), shopping history and so on.

But no matter how ambitious the ecosystem is, for commercial reasons, it is clear that eventually they will be building their own country, a walled garden.