Tech Customers Question Industry's Takeover Spree

Huge tech companies buying up small tech companies.

  • A good thing

    Votes: 17 12.7%

  • A bad thing

    Votes: 67 50.0%

  • Undecided

    Votes: 50 37.3%
  • Total voters
    134
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Huge tech companies buying up small tech companies. Is this a good thing or bad thing?

The world's largest technology companies have been on a buying spree, spending billions to snap up smaller companies. And often the buyers say they're doing it for their customers — businesses, hospitals, schools and government agencies. As tech companies get bigger and bigger, they say, they can offer a broader variety of products and make it easier for their customers to do one-stop shopping.
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I'm mixed on this. I was laid off because IBM took over a data bank I worked at in Kansas City some 10 years ago. They brought in their own people and laid off all of DST's people.

A friend of mine works for CNA Insurance in IT Security. IBM is in the process of taking over operations right now. He's already slated to be laid off within the next two months along with the rest of his team.

While it's nice to have the big guys watching your back in companies and corporation, it'd be nicer still if they would start training some of the qualified existing employees instead of kicking them to the curb all the time.
 
Spree? Never heard of it.

i don't really care. Small companies can either be small and fairly useless, or amazing. I probably should've picked the undecided option.
 
It can be a good thing if everyone wins (nobody loses jobs, etc) and a bad thing just as well (take over, move new people in, toss out old staff, etc) so I chose Undecided. It's entirely dependent on the situation at hand, not just something "industry-wide" that's one way or the other...
 
colinstu said:
Spree? Never heard of it.

i don't really care. Small companies can either be small and fairly useless, or amazing. I probably should've picked the undecided option.
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Spree isn't a name of a company. It's a noun which means "sudden outburst" or "overindulgence of activity", as in "there was a huge sale at the mall, so I went on a spending spree".
 
It depends... we have a running joke in our company that we want to be taken over by Google...
 
It seems to me the bigger a company gets,the more out of touch with the consumer they become. Product quality and customer support starts slipping. Without competition,they don't try as hard to please the customer,they think they're too big to fail.
 
So....Americans still haven't learned megalithic corporate entities are a bad thing for the economy and the consumer?

....oh. Wow.
 
Azhar said:
Spree isn't a name of a company. It's a noun which means "sudden outburst" or "overindulgence of activity", as in "there was a huge sale at the mall, so I went on a spending spree".
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I know what spree means. I read the title as "(random big company) taking over Spree". I was way wrong, lol.
 
If big companies didn't take over small ones where would all the innovation come from? Yanno buying another idea then completely screwing the actual inventor over it as has been done many times in the "tech" industry.
 
I don't think it's a problem so much with companies buying smaller companies as it is stockholders control over the companies. A buy out may look great on paper and boost stock value then the stock holders sell all their stock. Of course the value isnt there and the company goes in the shitter.
 
Undecided, here. Without putting much thought into it, I'd say it a rather good thing.

When a big company buys a technology, that tech has a better chance to see the light of day.
 
Good thing because huge budgets mean the tech can see massive potential.
Bad thing because a small product could also get lost or canned.

Google is probably a "good" example of this. Mobile talk lately, I'll just pick Android, which they bought in 2005. I'd venture to guess Android isn't what it'd be today without Google's backing.

Another example, but an example of this being bad, is Danger... The Kin. We all see how well that turned out.
 
Bahamut said:
It can be a good thing if everyone wins (nobody loses jobs, etc) and a bad thing just as well (take over, move new people in, toss out old staff, etc) so I chose Undecided. It's entirely dependent on the situation at hand, not just something "industry-wide" that's one way or the other...
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QFT.
 
IRSmurf said:
Undecided, here. Without putting much thought into it, I'd say it a rather good thing.

When a big company buys a technology, that tech has a better chance to see the light of day.
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Not if its tech tahts beneficial to the customers. If it is a product that was going to be good for us and make items cheaper it would never see the light of day when taken over by corporate America.

Corporate America will be the downfall of this nation. They are now the legislature, the judge, jury, and executioner.
 
It happens every so often, the smaller companies start to become less profitable, the big guys come in takes up equity and the industry straightens out a little bit, then a mass mob of little companies come in then they lose profitability ... repeat all.
 
Ive been pretty big into car audio for the last 20 years and even compete fairly seriously in sound quality competitions. 10 years ago there were a lot of smaller companies like Precision Power, Linear Power, Orion, MB Quart, Hifonics and a bunch of others. They made superb products and sponsored car audio competitions to the point where you could almost make a living by competing.

Then one by one they got bought out by larger companies. DEI being the biggest. And since all these big massive companies were interested in the bottom line only, they realized they could make more money selling $100 subs to 17 years olds by the tens of thousands so why bother selling $900 speakers to audiophiles at a fraction of the volume? So the crap entry level lines were put forward while the upper end quality lines geared to enthusiasts were done away with.

Polk Audio was founded and owned by Matt Polk since the 70's and they made top notch gear in their higher end lines. I used their stuff exclusively for 5 years in competition. DEI bought them out a couple years ago and told us all nothing would change. So far, theyve done away with their car audio department, eliminated their top end speakers and subs and laid off all their installers.

As a result, sound quality competitors mainly use raw home audio drivers because there are almost no high quality car audio speakers left.

This will be the same with computer gear. Youll have 3 companies owning everything and theyll decide they can make more money selling $50 motherboards to average consumers and in bulk to Dell or HP and the $250 motherboards will fall way down the priority ladder.
 
Gym Rat said:
This will be the same with computer gear. Youll have 3 companies owning everything and theyll decide they can make more money selling $50 motherboards to average consumers and in bulk to Dell or HP and the $250 motherboards will fall way down the priority ladder.
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I think it's already happening. ASUS is selling off / farming out their motherboard business. I can only imagine the craptacular MB's which will soon find their way into online shopping carts. For me I used to swear by ASUS. They used to make bullet proof motherboards. Now little by little it takes more and more effort to filter out the crappy boards from the well made ones. Usually you can do this by price, but not always.

Oh well sooner or later we'll figure out the negatives associated with creating these monolithic mega companies.
 
Gym Rat

I miss my Xfire speakers, MA Audio subs and planet audio deck... such a great set up for so cheap and gave me excellent audio too. I forget what my amp was I do remember not buying my friends RF ... think i went with a sony.
 
As long as they bring money to me by the truckload, I say its all good.

But I still prefer gold.
 
I would say this is a bad thing. Especially if the companies become slaves to investors. Quality goes away, customer satisfaction goes away, employee happiness goes away, and eventually the whole company goes away (unless they get government bailouts).... while the greedy bastards at the top continue to stuff their pockets.
 
Dreaz said:
So....Americans still haven't learned megalithic corporate entities are a bad thing for the economy and the consumer?

....oh. Wow.
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And what are Americans supposed to do? On another note, stuff like this happens all over the world as well.
 
TheCommander said:
And what are Americans supposed to do? On another note, stuff like this happens all over the world as well.
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No it doesn't! America is an evil place where all the bad stuff on the whole planet happens. Everywhere else is paradise compared to here! Obviously the right thing to do is become just like Europe in every way, but even then we still wouldn't measure up, well just because.
 
Hamish Campbell said:
Buy from small businesses whenever possible? Support politics that favor healthy economic development instead of profits profits profits?
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So you will spend 50% more on the American technology? That fit within your gameplan? Or is it only for the utopia that you wish everyone else other than yourself would follow?
 
TexUs said:
So you will spend 50% more on the American technology? That fit within your gameplan? Or is it only for the utopia that you wish everyone else other than yourself would follow?
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Is your game plan to go out of your way to buy foreign products from large multi-nationals just to show your silent support for cut-throat capitalism at all costs?

I didn't suggest anything radical. It's not hard to go to your local farmers market and buy vegetables instead of buying produced packaged and shipped from south america or asia at the supermarket. It's easy enough to buy that next computer desk from a local furniture store than going to IKEA and walking out with a $100 box of crap.
 
Can be good, but I lean towards the not good side. On the gaming front, when big software publishers like Activision, EA, and Microsoft buy smaller developers, sometimes the spirit of the game developer diminishes. Game making just becomes another money scheme without any love for gaming in and of itself.

On the positive side, the devs (similar to starving artists) will have someone to invest in them allowing for steady paychecks, to back them up financially. But as a whole, too much buying isn't good for the consumer.
 
Hamish Campbell said:
Buy from small businesses whenever possible? Support politics that favor healthy economic development instead of profits profits profits?
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I and many others do the best I can buying "made in the USA" products but this thread is specifically about tech companies which usually are specialized and target a specific group of people and not your average person.
 
michael.pa2 said:
It seems to me the bigger a company gets,the more out of touch with the consumer they become. Product quality and customer support starts slipping. Without competition,they don't try as hard to please the customer,they think they're too big to fail.
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It's not about becoming out of touch with the customer it's about improving profit margins and increasing the stock price. You are fooling yourself if you think large publicly traded companies are making their decisions based on the consumer alone. They make their decisions on will it increase consumer speeding thus increase our revenue/profit.
 
Hamish Campbell said:
Is your game plan to go out of your way to buy foreign products from large multi-nationals just to show your silent support for cut-throat capitalism at all costs?
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No.

If the cost is similar, I'll buy it locally.

More often than not, that's not the case. I'm not going to spend 50% more money on an American-made product I can just as easily buy foreign.

Now, if there's a quality difference (I sure as hell wouldn't buy a China handgun, damned thing would probably blow up if you look at it wrong), that's a different story.

I'm specifically talking about products that are comparable.
 
Trick question: it's good and bad. Everything is a tradeoff - nothing is 100% good or 100% bad for everyone. The most obvious good things about large companies in general are economies of scale and greater access to capital. Some of the most obvious bad things about large companies have been mentioned already - presumed decrease in customer satisfaction and decreased competition.

As far as the domestic vs import argument goes, I'm a believer in "Do what you do best; outsource the rest."
 
TexUs said:
Oh, really? So your computer desk comment was comparing items of equal make and quality? Must've missed it.
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It was a comparison of products, I never specified that they would be of unequal make and quality. If someone wanted to buy a $100 piece of shit desk I would encourage them to buy that piece of shit locally instead of at IKEA if possible. What are we even arguing about?
 
Hamish Campbell said:
It was a comparison of products, I never specified that they would be of unequal make and quality. If someone wanted to buy a $100 piece of shit desk I would encourage them to buy that piece of shit locally instead of at IKEA if possible. What are we even arguing about?
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That $100 POS American desk would cost $50 for a China counterpart- that's my point.
Given the same desk, made by two different corporations... You'd spend more money on the American one just because it's American? Or would you see the same thing for less money and buy the China one? I know which would I would buy, and obviously so does the majority of Americans.

My point was that "supporting locally" sounds good on paper until it comes time to purchase with your hard-earned dollars.
 
On one hand larger companies can offer more products and a larger talent pool to their customers. Often for a reduced cost compared to smaller organizations. On the down side the large companies are often too bureaucratic to function effectively. Simple tasks go through too many parties and through too many process controls which ultimately increases operational costs, increases lead time to accomplish anything and worse yet it pisses off the customers. I've seen it first hand too many times. In fact, I see it on a daily basis.
 
TexUs said:
My point was that "supporting locally" sounds good on paper until it comes time to purchase with your hard-earned dollars.
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Yes, of course it is. From technology to heads of lettuce, it's usually cheaper to buy foreign. What I'm suggesting is that if a person puts forth a modicum of effort, they can buy locally in a lot of cases and suffer only minor cost increases or convenience decreases (sometimes none at all). Is that really such a controversial opinion?
 
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