The short answer is: Probably not. The reasons show just how big their ambitions have become.
First, Qualcomm, which makes semiconductors for smartphones, invested with Richard Branson’s Virgin Group on a constellation of satellites. Google went into orbit too, joining Fidelity on a $1 billion investment in SpaceX, Elon Musk’s private rocketry company. The Internet search company also seemed interested in reselling the wireless assets of established phone companies.
Microsoft on Wednesday showed off the latest version of its single most important asset, the Windows operating system, along with some gee-whiz holographic goggles, a device with virtually (pun intended) no market. On Thursday Amazon, an online retailer with a big cloud computing business, said it was buying an Israeli maker of advanced semiconductors for about $350 million.
All of this could be ascribed to the kind of behavior often seen in the late stages of a bubble, when some companies have more money than ideas, and it has become hard to tell what anything is worth.
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