The local tycoons can only relieve their loneliness by spending money!

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You have to admit that in the world of so many apps, it is not easy for even some good products to find a good profit model. At this time, being acquired by a good buyer is actually a good choice.

In recent years, Facebook can be said to be a buyer of apps known for its high bids, whether it was the acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 or the acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, which were sky-high prices at the time.

Unlike Facebook, which likes to pay high prices, Yahoo, whose business is not doing well, is much more stingy. However, Yahoo's characteristic is that it buys apps at a very high frequency. In addition to the high price of $1.1 billion for Tumblr, the acquisition prices led by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer are generally between several million and tens of millions of dollars. After the acquisition, these apps were basically shut down and the teams were disbanded.

Now, following Facebook and Yahoo, the world of apps has welcomed a new buyer - Microsoft. In December 2014, Microsoft acquired the mobile email client Acompli for more than $200 million. Just two months later, it was revealed that it acquired the calendar application Sunrise for more than $100 million.

Although more buyers is a good thing for startups, but for these app buyers, they actually have their own troubles while making frequent purchases.

If you have seen the poor performance of Facebook's Poke, Slingshot, Paper and Rooms, then you probably understand Facebook's troubles. On the one hand, its own products are "hanging up" one by one, and on the other hand, new social products like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat are growing rapidly. At this time, the young billionaire Zuckerberg has no choice but to buy, buy, and buy to solve the problem.

Fortunately, Zuckerberg's vision is still quite accurate. The number of users of Instagram, which he bought for $1 billion in 2012, has surpassed Twitter. Even if Instagram's market value cannot reach Twitter's 30 billion, no one should think that Facebook lost money when it bought it.

"Saving Yahoo" can be said to be a tone that has not changed since Marissa Mayer took office, so it has naturally never been achieved. Most of the apps acquired by Yahoo have been shut down, but Yahoo has not been able to change its own situation after recruiting these talents. In this sense, Yahoo cannot be called a good buyer, and even buying and buying has not been able to solve Mayer's anxiety.

For Microsoft, the new buyer, the situation is a bit complicated. In the past few years, Microsoft has been sparing no effort to support Windows Phone, but with the rapid development of iOS and Android, there is really no chance for Windows Phone in the smartphone market. A serious problem for Microsoft is that it is slowly becoming a company with almost no users on the mobile side.

Although the developer account "Microsoft Corporation" has 55 and 48 apps submitted to Google Play and App Store respectively, most of the remaining apps may not have been heard of except for office and cloud storage tools, which are rarely used. This is not a good sign for Microsoft, which always mentions "Mobile First" in various public occasions. So in short, Microsoft's anxiety lies in the fact that it needs mobile users. In the case that Windows Phone has no hope of catching up, to solve this problem, it needs to build software services on iOS and Android platforms.

Since Microsoft already has document processing and cloud storage tools, the most compatible apps with them are probably the supporting productivity tools such as email and calendar. So it is reasonable for Microsoft to buy Acompli and Sunrise at a high price. After buying Acompli, Microsoft launched Outlook, which is even considered to be the best Gmail client for iOS.

A year ago, I didn't have any Microsoft software installed on iOS or Android, but now I have more and more Microsoft products on my mobile devices. I occasionally use OneDrive and Outlook, and Sunrise is used every day. Microsoft is still doing a good job in spending money to acquire users.

For these wealthy people, problems that can be solved with money are often not problems. But a company like Yahoo is in trouble. Although it still has a market value of several hundred billion dollars, it does not know where its way out lies, and spending money cannot alleviate its inner anxiety.