Ten Worst Internet Acquisitions Ever

News Type: Opinion — Seeded on Thu Nov 23, 2006 5:08 PM EST

Article Source: Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

technology, internet, microsoft, yahoo, ebay, aol, skype, hotmail, cnet, geocities

As the market for acquiring fledgling Internet companies heats up, it's worth taking a look at all those acquisitions that didn't quite work out. For every Internet acquisition that's successful there seems to be dozens that die on the vine.

So what makes for a really bad Internet acquisition? First, it has to be expensive. No one's going to rake a company over the coals over a few blown $50 million acquisitions. That might sound like a lot of money to you and me, but that's a rounding error to Google.

Second, for an acquisition to be lousy it has to contribute little or no long term growth to the acquiring company. An acquisition that doesn't fit with a company's long term strategy and that is quickly forgotten - that's a bad buy.

So, here is my highly subjective list of the 10 worst Internet acquisitions of all time:

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Michael Sautter's Column, All of Newsvine
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Spuds Stuff

The 3 that really stand out for me are Excite, GeoCities and Netscape. All a complete waste of money. the whole list is excellent though. Great seed :)

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#1 - Thu Nov 23, 2006 7:08 PM EST

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MICHAEL SAUTTER

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Ten Worst Internet Acquisitions Ever

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