Talent is bought with pre-tax money. Same with investments.

And Facebook was barely making any money while it was becoming the dominant social network.

No it doesn't really help. The money is mostly stockpiled offshore specifically to avoid taxation. They aren't using it to hire more employees or launch new products. The only thing it might help with is to prevent hostile acquisitions.

Yes, it does help.

A) They have massive operations internationally and hire a lot.

B) Did you witness Microsofts dismantling of Nokia? That was a takedown of an entire ecosystem and huge gift to Apple and Google/Android as well. Paid for by cheap taxes overseas.

Nokia never had a real ecosystem. That's exactly why they failed.

Nokia had a massive eco-system of suppliers, tech providers, distributors, service providers.

For every one person working at Nokia, there was another, in a company, somewhere else selling to them, buying from the, distributing for them.

The same thing happened at BlackBerry.

I'm not talking about 'apps' - I'm talking about a 'business' eco-system and value chain.