I think that is what the author means as strategic vs. financial. For example, buying a company for its list of customers, to eliminate them as a potential thr

I think that is what the author means as strategic vs. financial. For example, buying a company for its list of customers, to eliminate them as a potential threat, to get some IP/technology they have, etc. You are right that the large tech companies have extremely large bankrolls to just do what they want in a sense. If you view it from their perspective, a success might mean they get access to 1000's of companies using GitHub to try and sell Enterprise hosting, development tools, etc. to. All it cost them was $7.5B in stock.