I was recently searching the web for a list of Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft acquisitions and found a great chart by Library House. The data started in mid-2006 and extended through mid-2007. All companies were sorted into specific categories and close examination revealed interesting trends. I have updated the chart through April, 2008 and added several new categories along the way. The new data comes from a variety of sources including news articles, company press releases and even wikipedia.
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Several classifications don’t exactly fit but were used rather than adding new categories. My priority when adding the newer acquisitions was to identify the higher order trends, and some specificity was sacrificed. For example, Index Tools is listed as a “Development Tools” company rather than a web analytics company. The “search” category of was added due to Microsoft's purchase of Fast Search and Transfer in January 2008. Surprisingly, before adding that one data point, no search companies were listed on the chart. Click on the picture below for a full page view.
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Some quick observations:
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Microsoft has some serious acquisition momentum right now. The recent purchase of Rapt for advertising price optimization, Danger for mobile, Kidaro and Calista for virtualization, and Credentia and Komoku for identity/security is an interesting way to start 2008. Their focus until recently was more enterprise and advertising with some mobile, maps and social networking.
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Other than the Doubleclick purchase closing this month, Google has not purchased anything lately. Maybe their recently announced strong quarterly results will open their deep pockets again. The variety of color in the chart’s Google column shows a broad investment strategy across video, security, advertising, blogging, mobile, maps, presentation and other topics. This is consistent with their strategy of building a diverse technology infrastructure for their data center and product lines.
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Yahoo! keeps rolling in spite of Microsoft breathing over their shoulder. With FoxyTunes (music), Maven (video) and Index Tools (analytics), they continue their focus on advertising and eyeballs/community.
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On the lighter side, researching this chart uncovered a few April Fools Day jokes including Microsoft buying and then bundling open source with Windows, and Google making an unexpected move.
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What's next?
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