Over the period 2015–2017, the five giant technologically leading firms, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft (GAFAM) acquired 175 companies, from small startups to billion dollar deals. In this paper, we provide detailed information and statistics on the merger activity of the GAFAM and on the characteristics of the firms they acquire. One of the most intriguing features of these acquisitions is that, in the majority of cases, the product of the target is discontinued under its original brand name post acquisition and this is especially true for the youngest firms. There are three reasons to discontinue a product post acquisition: the product is not as successful as expected, the acquisition was not motivated by the product itself but by the target’s assets or R&D effort, or by the elimination of a potential competitive threat. While our data does not enable us to screen between these explanations, the present analysis shows that most of the startups are killed in their infancy. This important phenomenon calls for tighter intervention by competition authorities in merger cases involving big techs.

在2015年至2017年期间，五家技术领先的巨头公司（谷歌，亚马逊，Facebook，苹果和微软（GAFAM））收购了175家公司，从小型初创公司到数十亿美元的交易。在本文中，我们提供了有关GAFAM合并活动以及所收购公司特征的详细信息和统计信息。这些并购中最引人入胜的特征之一是，在大多数情况下，目标公司的产品在并购后以其原始品牌名称停产，这对于最年轻的公司而言尤其如此。终止产品并购有三个原因：产品未达到预期的成功，并购不是由产品本身驱动的，而是由目标公司的资产或研发工作或消除了潜在的竞争威胁驱动的。尽管我们的数据不能使我们在这些解释之间进行筛选，但本分析表明，大多数初创公司在婴儿期就被杀害了。这一重要现象要求竞争管理机构在涉及大型技术企业的合并案中加强干预。