With the recent and quite radical changes in the IT sphere, major companies specializing in providing the related services were forced to reconsider a range of their strategies and shift to new and improved techniques of expansion into the world market. Among such publicly traded organizations, Google, Inc and Twitter, Inc must be mentioned.
Both companies seem to have embraced the changes, managed to admit their mistakes and considered the creation of mergers and acquisitions as a viable strategy to adopt. As a result, both companies are currently growing by acquiring less competitive firms and expanding into the world market.
Indeed, a single look at Google’s policy will reveal its expansion plans: the organization has acquired BlackBerry, Boston Dynamics, Nest Labs, Inc. and Dropcam, and created a range of mergers, including the one with Motorola Mobility. It is clear that Google is planning to grow further and exploring new opportunities by creating new mergers.
Such an intense struggle for the dominance in the global market can be explained by the fact that Google has recently had to refuse from a range of ideas, which seemed quite promising a few years ago.
As the recent announcement on Google explained, the company had to abandon a number of the projects that it used to view as promising several years ago; for example, Picasa, Google Docs and Orkut were shut down, since similar and more successful services were created by other companies (Siganos, 2013).
As the representatives of the Google, Inc. explained, the services that were closed down had been created before new opportunities for communication and data exchange emerged; therefore, being ahead of its time, Google finally had to yield to more advanced companies.
Consequently, to regain its status, the company had to conjure a different strategy. As a result, the idea of merging with the companies that have designed more advanced services appeared to be the solution.
Twitter, Inc., however, had other reasons for choosing the policy of mergers and acquisitions. It is remarkable that, unlike Google, which was initially targeted at providing a variety of services, twitter was designed solely as a social network from the very creation of its concept (Sprangler, 2013).
Hence, the reasons for the leader of Twitter to adopt the strategy of mergers and acquisitions, shifting to the idea of corporate governance, have a different line of reasoning to be based on. Unlike Google, which does not seem to have very strong rivals except the apple, Inc., Twitter has to deal with a lot of competition, primarily, the rivalry with Facebook.
Though each of the companies bases its philosophy on a unique concept and includes original options for its users to enjoy, both fall under the category of social networks and perform the same function, i.e., facilitate the process of users’ communication by transferring information from one user to another.
Therefore, twitter clearly needed to revamp its reputation by growing larger and more influential, which resulted in a range of acquisitions and mergers with various companies, primarily, the ones dealing with analysis and advertisement.
Though each of the organizations has its own reasons for choosing the strategy of mergers and acquisitions, both Twitter and Google seem to be going in the same direction. The results of these steps, however, are bound to be quite different as well.
Reference List
Siganos, A. (2013). Google attention and target price run ups. International Review of Financial Analysis, 29(3), 219–226.
Sprangler, T. (2013). Twitter nets social-TV startup blue fin. Multichannel News, 34(6), 22.