Customers Question Tech Industry's Takeover Spree

crimeandpunishment writes: "When it comes to the world's largest technology companies, is bigger better? Maybe for the companies, but maybe not for their customers. Tech companies, which have spent $350 billion buying other companies over the past few years, have marketed their acquisitions as beneficial for their customers, offering them a broader range of products, and making it easier for one-stop shopping. But changes in customer service may be offsetting any benefit. In the words of the chief information officer for a large association, 'When the smaller guys are gobbled up by bigger guys, in theory it's supposed to be better, but in our experience it's been worse.'"

Comments

Take over

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

When has anything a company has done been for your benefit?

Re:Take over

[Darth Sdlavrot]

You jest!

The only shares I own directly are in my ESPP. My company has about 2B shares outstanding and I currently own about 4000. My company also has about $11B in cash last I heard.

If they cared about shareholders they'd be using that cash to pay dividends, or buying shares back -- more agressively than they claim to be -- to raise the share price.

YMMV.

You can't have your cake and eat it too...

[hackel]

If people really want this free-market capitalist monstrosity, then they need to accept the fact that what is best for the *company* always comes first. It really irritates me every time I hear people complaining that a corporation is not thinking of its customers first, or its employees... That is not a corporations job. They're one and only job is to make money for their shareholders.

If you don't like this--as you shouldn't--then the system itself is what needs to be changed. Don't blame the individual companies--they are doing exactly what we have set them up to do. Capitalism itself is the enemy.

Re:You can't have your cake and eat it too...

[selven]

That is not a corporations job. They're one and only job is to make money for their shareholders.

I don't see how that statement is a necessary and unavoidable part of capitalism. Capitalism is just an economic system that relies on people freely making economic transactions with each other. It does not inherently require the concept of "shareholders" and even the idea that a corporation needs to have owners is not absolute - a corporation is just a relationship between employees and customers, it does not need to have owners any more than the marriage between a man and his wife needs to somehow be owned by someone. There are lots of (unfortunately, small) businesses that do serve their customers, but we can, and should, support them.

Re:You can't have your cake and eat it too...

[dkleinsc]

While the exact form of it (the legal fiction of a limited liability corporation) isn't inherent in capitalism, the argument that this sort of concentration of wealth and ownership is an inherent aspect of capitalism was really the central point of Karl Marx's Capital. The way that most civilized countries prevent that problem from overwhelming them is via the use of democratic government to check the power of owners in favor of everybody else.

The big exception to this has been the United States since 1980. Anyone complaining about excessive taxation or regulation today ought to read up on what US law looked like in 1960 or so.