The world's top ten tech companies --Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Intel, Oracle, Samsung and Baidu--increasingly have something in common: they're doing mission-critical work in Israel that's core to their businesses back at HQ. The idea here is to significantly advance Alexa’s vocal search capabilities for Amazon’s core business: retail. Google several years ago bought Waze, an Israeli navigation app, in its mission to connect the online and the offline worlds. Facebook’s acquisitions of Israeli companies, specifically Onavo and Face.com --have significantly boosted Facebook’s core business: targeted advertising. These are not sideshows to Facebook’s main business, these are the primary drivers of Facebook’s main business.

Source: Forbes February 20, 2018 09:33 UTC