T
he technology sector bubbles with activity. Scarcely a week goes by without a clutch of takeovers being announced. Start-ups are gobbled up by their larger peers. Companies that have already proved their worth merge or are acquired.
The high-profile, big ticket examples are well known: in a handful of cases, seriously large sums are paid for tech companies that the largest players want to dovetail with their existing operations. Think of YouTube, launched in 2005 and bought the following year by Google for $1.65bn; Instagram, launched in 2010 and swept up by Facebook for $1bn in 2012; WhatsApp, launched in 2009 and bought by Facebook in 2014 for $19.3bn.
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