Not really. Search engines, Warehousing infra-structure, operating systems, compute clouds, marketing to achieve critical mass are pretty expensive.

Typically, isnt the largest expense for a tech company payroll? Companies like the big 5 may be anomalies because they operate a number of their own data centers

To my knowledge and you are exempt for expensive industrial equipment. Now you have a sitation where Whatsapp is more worth than a big global enterprise like Sony, but haven't required nowhere near the same amount of workers or capital.