The Facebook logo is pictured at the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California January 29, 2013.Robert Galbraith/Reuters
Social networking giant Facebook Inc.'s $19-billion (U.S.) bid for fast-growing mobile-messaging company WhatsApp would be a blockbuster deal, but it wouldn't quite crack the top five tech deals of all time. In fact, it would come in sixth place.
The top honour would still be held by the $41-billion merger between fibre-optic technology heavyweights JDS Uniphase Corp. and SDL Inc. back in the mid-2000s, according to data from Thomson Reuters.
But the two deals have similarities. The Facebook and WhatsApp deal revolves around two competitors joining forces to capture more Internet sharing of pictures and messages, and the fibre-optics companies joined forces to support the growing interest in sharing files over the Internet.
With JDS there's also a Canadian connection. The company was based in both Nepean, Ont. and San Jose, Calif., with 10,000 employees in its Ottawa office at the peak.
Here is the rest of top five largest deals:
2. In 1995, General Motors Corp. spun off computer service subsidiary Electronic Data Systems Corp., which landed in the lap of shareholders. The value of that move was $28.4-billion.
3. In 2001, Compaq Computer Corp. merged with Hewlett-Packard Co. for $23.5-billion to create a computing, printing, software and services giant.
4. In 2000, online authentication and security business VeriSign Inc. bought up domain name company Network Solutions Inc. for $20.8-billion.
5. Last year, Dell Inc.'s founder Michael Dell and a private equity group took the company private for $19.3-billion.
Missing from that list is one big thech deal that wasn't to be. If Microsoft Corp. had gone through with its initial plans to buy Yahoo for about $45-billion back in 2008, then there would be have a different chart topper. But Microsoft eventually walked away from an advertising competition with Google and left Yahoo behind.