During the Great Recession, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft acquired more than 100 companies from 2008 to 2010, according to Refinitiv, a financial data company. Some of those deals have become fundamental to their businesses today, including Apple’s acquisition of the chip company P.A. Semi, which contributed to the company’s development of its new laptop processors, and Google’s acquisition of AdMob, which helped create a mobile advertising business.
“The big will get bigger and the poor will get poorer,” said Michael Cusumano, deputy dean of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That’s the way network effects work.”