Technology
Internet Giants: Who Owns Who on the Web
Internet Giants: Who Owns Who on the Web
View the high resolution version of today’s graphic by clicking here.
In the brick and mortar world, decades of consolidation has led certain conglomerates to wield massive amounts of control in the banking, consumer goods, alcohol, and auto sectors.
And although the internet is incredibly vast in scale and much newer, it’s also heading in a similar direction.
As a result, it’s not unusual to see behemoths like Facebook, Alphabet, and Amazon leveraging their size, networks, and market leading positions to buy up competitors while also making other strategic acquisitions. This ongoing consolidation has created a vast web of subsidiaries, providing each parent organization with additional insurance in maintaining their position at the top of the digital food chain.
The Connected Web
Today’s infographic comes to us from 16Best, and it shows the companies or websites that are owned by the bigger fish.
They fall into two categories, generally:
1. Gobbling Up the Competition
What better way to ensure dominance than to eat up all of the smaller fish that do the same thing you do?
Look at Expedia, a company that owns fellow travel sites Travelocity, Hotels.com, Trivago, Orbitz, Hotwire, and CarRentals.com. Another example is Groupon, a company that bought competitor LivingSocial, as well as Crazeal (originally a local deal site in India).
2. Strategy and Tactics
Whether it is future proofing, apparent synergies, or filling a weakness, this broad category makes up the majority of situations. Here we see the internet giants making strategic acquisitions to ensure future success.
A good example of this is Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus, which allows the social network giant to enter into the VR business – the exact type of new venture that would be nearly impossible to do without help and expertise in a complex technical field.
Correction: A previous version of this graphic listed PayPal as a subsidiary of eBay. PayPal was spun off into a separate publicly traded company in 2015.
Brands
How Tech Logos Have Evolved Over Time
From complete overhauls to more subtle tweaks, these tech logos have had quite a journey. Featuring: Google, Apple, and more.
How Tech Logos Have Evolved Over Time
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
One would be hard-pressed to find a company that has never changed its logo. Granted, some brands—like Rolex, IBM, and Coca-Cola—tend to just have more minimalistic updates. But other companies undergo an entire identity change, thus necessitating a full overhaul.
In this graphic, we visualized the evolution of prominent tech companies’ logos over time. All of these brands ranked highly in a Q1 2024 YouGov study of America’s most famous tech brands. The logo changes are sourced from 1000logos.net.
How Many Times Has Google Changed Its Logo?
Google and Facebook share a 98% fame rating according to YouGov. But while Facebook’s rise was captured in The Social Network (2010), Google’s history tends to be a little less lionized in popular culture.
For example, Google was initially called “Backrub” because it analyzed “back links” to understand how important a website was. Since its founding, Google has undergone eight logo changes, finally settling on its current one in 2015.
| Company | Number of Logo Changes |
|---|---|
| 8 | |
| HP | 8 |
| Amazon | 6 |
| Microsoft | 6 |
| Samsung | 6 |
| Apple | 5* |
Note: *Includes color changes. Source: 1000Logos.net
Another fun origin story is Microsoft, which started off as Traf-O-Data, a traffic counter reading company that generated reports for traffic engineers. By 1975, the company was renamed. But it wasn’t until 2012 that Microsoft put the iconic Windows logo—still the most popular desktop operating system—alongside its name.
And then there’s Samsung, which started as a grocery trading store in 1938. Its pivot to electronics started in the 1970s with black and white television sets. For 55 years, the company kept some form of stars from its first logo, until 1993, when the iconic encircled blue Samsung logo debuted.
Finally, Apple’s first logo in 1976 featured Isaac Newton reading under a tree—moments before an apple fell on his head. Two years later, the iconic bitten apple logo would be designed at Steve Jobs’ behest, and it would take another two decades for it to go monochrome.
-
Green1 week agoRanked: The Countries With the Most Air Pollution in 2023
-
Automotive2 weeks agoAlmost Every EV Stock is Down After Q1 2024
-
AI2 weeks agoThe Stock Performance of U.S. Chipmakers So Far in 2024
-
Markets2 weeks agoCharted: Big Four Market Share by S&P 500 Audits
-
Real Estate2 weeks agoRanked: The Most Valuable Housing Markets in America
-
Money2 weeks agoWhich States Have the Highest Minimum Wage in America?
-
AI2 weeks agoRanked: Semiconductor Companies by Industry Revenue Share
-
Travel2 weeks agoRanked: The World’s Top Flight Routes, by Revenue