acquisitions

content/post/2023/10/acquisition.md

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+---
+title: "Acquisitions"
+date: 2023-10-18T15:00:00+02:00
+categories:
+  - braindump
+---
+
+After a lengthy regulatory review, Microsoft now officially closes its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Seventy _billion_, the largest transfer sum to date in the video gaming industry. The EU was worried this might cause harm to the industry as Microsoft comfortably wiggles itself in an even bigger monopoly position, but after enough bribery and ass-kissing, the worries seemed to have evaporated and the lights have been set on green. 
+
+Microsoft now owns Activision Blizzard, which in itself already was a conglomerate of giant buy-ups, including ZeniMax Media, which already was a conglomerate of giant buy-ups, including Bethesda, id Software, Alpha Dog, ... _Mind-boggling_ is putting it mildly. And yet, if you inspect [infographics of tech giants' billion-dollar acquisitions](https://www.cbinsights.com/research/tech-giants-billion-dollar-acquisitions-infographic/), these buy-ups seem to be rapidly increasing daily happenings. I don't know why we as a collective don't care, but if this doesn't sound alarming to you, then I don't know what does. For reference, MS' gobbled up GitHub and ZeniMax for "only" $7.5B each. I didn't even know LinkedIn is also owned by MS nowadays. Other giant tech companies [such as Alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet) apply the same strategy. Innovating seems to equal buying up the competition. 
+
+![](../acquisitions.png "Timeline of Tech Giants' Acquisitions as of 2021, copyright CB Insights.")
+
+None of this is particularly new, but the frequency and total amounts seem to be rising at an alarming rate. And I wonder: to what end? Where does this end? When one of those companies owns _everything_?
+
+---
+
+What perhaps worries me the most is that this poisonous innovation philosophy has seeped through the cracks of everyday life: everyone that even remotely runs a business is doomed to eventually start thinking this way---courtesy of capitalism. Below are a few examples of the poison spreading in my own social environment.
+
+Every single company I've worked for is guilty of the "innovation through acquisition" strategy. The first software development company I've worked for, in 2007, counted 400+ employees. When I left, seven years later, that was 900. Now, it's 4000. This number does not go up because they hire every graduate software developer they encounter, but rather because they simply buy up every small, medium, and even large competitor that puts out software on the same market as they're fishing in. This---of course---extends well beyond the Belgian borders, with obvious cultural clashes, nearshoring and offshoring catastrophes, and returning mass layoff and hiring sprees as a result. It was the reason why I quit. 
+
+Not that the next company I worked for fared any better when it comes to what they call "seamless integration of innovation capital". Culture clashes, however small, are extremely difficult to iron out, especially if you're not given any wiggle room to focus on exactly that instead of putting half-baked ideas into production. 
+
+But these are tech companies, of which we almost expect this stupidity to happen. How about the retail industry? Same thing. Small and local toy shops we loved to frequent are gone because they've been gobbled up by larger but still local ones. These too are long gone: instead, there's just one giant toy company that now controls all these franchises. The result? Mediocrity, sameness, and on our part, an aversion to go shopping there. All in all, a good and logical evolution, wouldn't you say? Just take a minute to inspect every packet you've got in your pantry right now: chances are high you'll encounter either the logo of Unilever, Danone, Coca Cola, or General Mills.
+
+It gets worse. Even a small local organic bakery that started out in their personal kitchen a few years ago somehow had to "grow" by franchising out to different towns. Guess what, now they're bankrupt. I've seen the bakery industry acquire smaller bakeries that are struggling but still worked hard to serve their customers unique delicious products that now have been replaced by bland squishy bread that I don't even want to give to our chickens. A good and logical evolution, wouldn't you say? 
+
+Why can't people just be content with their yearly revenue? Why does everything have to be bigger---and clearly, _not_ better? If the revenue curve doesn't go up each year, blind panic seems to help us gravitate towards that poisonous philosophy: why not try an acquisition or two to give sales a healthy boost? The more I think about this, the more I get sick of the way (we seem to accept that) this world works right now. 
+
+---
+
+Thanks to this gobble-up-or-die philosophy, smaller game development studios that refuse to be bought up instead have to close doors, such as [Mimimi Studios](https://www.mimimi.games/our-final-game/) who quote increased financial pressure and risk to be the main perpetrators. Mimimi made superb stealth strategy games such as _Shadow Tactics_ and _Desperados III_. Unfortunately, that genre is a bit of a niche, and no doubt partially thanks to the mainstream _Call of Duty_ craze---now comfortably owned by Microsoft, by the way---Mimimi is forced to seize operations. 
+
+Time for _Queen_ to kick off _Another One Bites the Dust_ again. 
+