The Power of Google and Amazon Looms Over Tech IPOs
- Young tech companies almost all do business with tech giants
- Some use Google, Amazon products while competing against them
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After a years-long drought, a wave of technology startups -- Uber, Lyft, Pinterest and more -- are going public, evidence that the sector is thriving. But there’s a shadow hanging over almost all of them.
Seventeen of the 22 tech initial public offerings that aimed to raise $100 million or more in the last 18 months mention Amazon.com Inc. or Google -- and sometimes both -- as a competitor or risk to their business. Many, like cyber security software maker Tenable Holdings Inc., are operationally dependent on Amazon’s cloud. Others, like photo collection site Pinterest Inc., compete directly with one of the giants, in this case Google’s image search.