Interesting acquisitions

Interner acquisitions pot is boiling over. Keeping people and companies (big and small) on their toes. The big 3 are in a spending spree..good for the market because when you there is "perceived" value for innovative products in the market, juices flow out. Juices flow out even otherwise, but we give them more freedom now! Flavor of the day or should I say "probable" flavor of the day :

Google gets YouTube ($1.6 billion).
Yahoo gets Facebook (around $1 billion).

Have to keep our fingers crossed and wait for the news. It's not just acquisitions these companies are into...they are into interesting partnerships too.
Google-Dell deal (Google default search engine on Dell computers, $1 billion dollars!). Yahoo did a similar deal with HP for $300 million! Google signs up with Adobe (Google toolbar installed with Adobe). Wonder if somebody is going to sign up with Sun for something similar :). Google signs up with Intuit (Small businesses can sign up with Google for Writely, G-Sheets ;) etc). Apart from this, I am sure there are many more that I have missed. Here are a few acquisitions from the past -->

Google :-

NevenVision (Image recognizing software)
Witely (Onlined document editing software)
Urchin (Google Analytics)
dMarc Broadcasting (Radio ad)
Android (software for mobile telephones)
Zipdash - Provides navigation assistance for road traffic on mobile in real time by GPS.
Picasa - software for management of photographs

Yahoo :-
Jumpcut (Online Video editing software)
Deli.cio.us (Tagging software)
Upcoming - Social events calendar "online"
Flickr - software for management of photographs
Overture - (Now Yahoo Search Marketing (SM) for 1.6 billion)
3721 Network Software Co. (November 2003) 3721 NSC is a Hong Kong based language keyword search engine
Kelkoo - A European based online shopping and advertising service
Musicmatch - personalized music software and services
WUF Networks - multi-media transfer of data onto mobile device
Dialpad - Internet Telephony, Alibaba (August 2005)
Farechase - Web-based travel search engine,


Microsoft :-

Nobody can forget Hotmail.
FolderShare - a File-Synchronization Technology Provider
DeepMetrix - web site stats
Massive - videogame advertising
Onfolio - web research
Teleo, Media-Streams - VoIP
MotionBridge - mobile search
TSSX - China mobile services
SeaDragon - Large Image manipulation)
Frontbridge - e-mail Security
Mappoint - Mapping
Futuresoft - Web filtering
AssetMetrix - License management

Other companies might not have done this much in the internet space, but they surely have had a share of the acquisition pie..I can think of ...
AOL with truveo (video search), teoma (search engine) and Sony acquiring Grouper, a online video startup

I am sure this list is not all-encompassive, but nevertheless it surely does give us an idea on where all this is all headed. Companies see Internet to be the future of media, entertainment and information and have been busily investing in everything that can capture a users attention or should I say eyeball gazing! All I can say is that I am in tandem with this direction because that is where I am spending almost all my time !!!!!!!!