[ChrisLTD]

I think that's part of the author's point. These acquisitions happen early enough that it's not clear whether or not Instagram, Wordle, etc. would be competitive businesses.

However, I don't want to work in a regulatory environment that says I can't sell my small business to some larger company on the off chance it might some day be significant on its own.

[jmull]

Yeah that’s the author’s argument. That’s why I called it stupid.

The idea of forestalling competition by buying non-competitors doesn’t make any sense at all. NYT would have to buy all kinds of things, spending orders of magnitudes more money than they have.

I have a non-business game… is there any question why the NYT isn’t offerings me low-seven figures for it?

[ghayes]

Also, NYTimes could have cloned Wordle without paying Wardle, and that probably would have been worse for everyone involved.

[runako]

Instagram had raised nearly $60mm* and had 13 employees when it was sold. Wordle was a single person, part-time. They are not remotely similar for the purposes of antitrust discussion.

*Do people still know that this is a lot of money, and that most companies are not able to raise this much capital?

[paulryanrogers]

Perhaps there is a company size which is just too big to make acquisitions because the risk of stifling competition is too great. Or make any purchases of companies in markets that don't have enough competition.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

It's almost certainly not about the absolute size of the company, but its relative position in whatever niche(s) it operates in.

[lotsofpulp]

What is the size of a company? Net income? Market cap? Number of employees?

[jmull]

By the way, the NYT is big, but not that big… ~$2B yearly revenue.