Microsoft, Google and Amazon made record number of acquisitions in 2021


Microsoft, Google and Amazon have made more than a hundred acquisitions in 2021. This buying spree comes in an increasingly tense context with regulators who want to put an end to the abuse of a dominant position by these tech giants.

The American policeman of competition may be more and more hostile towards them, but that does not start the insatiable appetite of the Gafa. Indeed, Microsoft, Google and Amazon made more than 100 acquisitions in 2021, which is a record for the past decade, according to Dealogic data revealed by CNBC. The latter only take into account transactions made public, which suggests an even higher number in reality.

In detail, Microsoft acquired 56 companies, Amazon 29 and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, 22. In value, the volume of these transactions amounted to 25.7 billion dollars at Microsoft, including 19.7 billion disbursed to afford the voice recognition specialist Nuance Communications. On the side of Google, 22 billion dollars have been injected into acquisitions. Amazon closes the march with a total volume of transactions of 15.7 billion dollars, including 8.45 billion to get their hands on the Hollywood studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), holder in particular of the rights to the James Bond franchise.

If the three American giants completed a record number of acquisitions last year, it is not a question of astronomical sums. Among the notable operations recorded in recent years, there is in particular the acquisition of Whole Foods Market by Amazon in June 2017 for 13.7 billion dollars, or that of LinkedIn by Microsoft in June 2016 for 26.2 billion dollars.

2022, an already historic year with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard

However, the year 2022 got off to a flying start for the firm created by Bill Gates, since it agreed to put 68.7 billion dollars on the table to seize the Activision Blizzard group, publisher of the famous series call of duty, Warcraftor candy Crush. Microsoft would thus become the third player in the video game market, after Tencent and Sony. And of course, this is the biggest takeover in history by the Redmond giant.

Microsoft should also continue to be very active on the acquisition market, the group having expressed its desire to venture into the metaverse, this parallel universe considered as the “future of the Internet” and intended to the boundaries between the real world and the virtual world disappear. The acquisition of Activision Blizzard could also be a very interesting gateway into this universe for Microsoft. But the American giant must in particular face competition from Meta (Facebook), which also has great ambitions in this sector. In this context, Mark Zuckerberg’s firm is also shopping for new virtual reality and augmented reality technologies. The Californian group has notably acquired several dedicated studios, including BigBox VR.

The FTC and Europe on the offensive

This buying frenzy comes in an increasingly tense context with regulators who want to legislate to put an end to the abuse of dominant position by the technological giants. In the United States, this desire is embodied by Lina Khan, appointed by Joe Biden to head the American antitrust. The new boss of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US competition policeman, won a major victory this month when her organization’s complaint against Facebook was validated by a federal judge. This paves the way for a legal battle that could have serious consequences for Facebook, mired in scandals for several years.

The FTC, like the majority of American states, is calling for the dismantling of the Internet giant. Indeed, the American regulator wants in particular to force Facebook to separate from its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp. The noose is also tightening in Europe, where the UK Competition Authority demands that Facebook sell Giphy, the famous platform specializing in gifs, when the social network announced its takeover in 2020.

This could only be the beginning, as the European Union hopes to adopt in the coming months the final versions of the Digital Services Act (DSA), which aims to better regulate the operation of the platforms of the technological giants, and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), supposed to put an end to the unfair practices of these firms with cross-border influence. However, the task promises to be immense and complex for regulators. Last year, the FTC identified in a report 616 acquisitions of more than $ 1 million from Gafam between 2010 and 2019 which were not brought to its attention. The sign that these technological giants do not care about the potential sanctions of the regulators…



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