Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. K.Asif | India Today Group | Getty Images

The big five technology companies have so much market value — $2.85 trillion — that analysts and investors are constantly asking how they're going to spend it. Increasingly, the answer is they're going to buy into new markets. "Over the last five years, a lot of tech companies decided we need to be doing transformational stuff that gets us into new categories where we don't have a skill set or user base," said Jeff Richards, a partner at Silicon Valley venture firm GGV Capital. "The old low-risk, small acquisition, build it up over time method doesn't work." Media conglomerates, automakers, airlines, real estate companies and even lenders are all on the table as the tech leaders gear up to be a larger part of the overall economy.

Deals by tech giants in past 5 years Target Price Acquirer Year LinkedIn $26.2 bln Microsoft 2016 WhatsApp $19 bln Facebook 2014 Whole Foods $13.7 bln Amazon 2017 Motorola $12.5 bln Google 2012 Nokia $7.2 bln Microsoft 2014 Nest $3.2 bln Google 2014 Beats $3 bln Apple 2015 Mojang $2.5 bln Microsoft 2014 Oculus $2 bln Facebook 2014

Amazon's announced $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods on Friday is the company's first deal ever for more than $1 billion and gives the internet giant a network of more than 450 physical stores. Microsoft spent almost twice that amount last year, buying LinkedIn for $26 billion, by far its largest deal ever. Until then, Microsoft was virtually nonexistent in social networking or professional recruiting software. Google's priciest purchase was Motorola, which cost $12.5 billion in 2012, followed by digital thermostat maker Nest for $3.2 billion two years later. That's the leader in internet advertising spending close to $16 billion on hardware companies. Apple, like Amazon, isn't known for opening its wallet, and the one time it did in a big way was in 2014 for headphones maker Beats, which cost $3 billion. That was at least in part a talent acquisition, as Beats co-founder and music industry veteran Jimmy Iovine now runs Apple Music, which is a critical part of the company's goal of doubling its services revenue by 2010. (In the quarter that ended in December, Apple booked more than $7 billion in services revenue.) For Facebook, the $19 billion WhatsApp acquisition was shocking at the time for its price tag, though messaging as a product isn't too far removed from social networking. However, the $2 billion purchase of virtual reality company Oculus later that year was quite far afield.

Not a great track record