Saturday, November 04, 2006

Interesting Internet Acquisitions Since 1997

In the light of the current Web 2.0 acquisition wave, it might be interesting to look back in the time and what has been acquired on the web since 1997:

Acquisition / Bought by / Price / Date

Hotmail Microsoft $400mil December 1997
Internet Movie Database Amazon.com 1998
Viaweb Yahoo! $49mil June 8, 1998
Netscape Communications AOL $4.2bn 24 November 1998
GeoCities Yahoo! $3.57bn January 28, 1999
Broadcast.com Yahoo! $5.7bl April 1, 1999
Thawte VeriSign $575mil December 1999
Network Solutions VeriSign $15bn 2000
eGroups Yahoo! $432mil June 28, 2000
HotJobs Yahoo! December 27, 2001
PayPal eBay October 2002
Inktomi Yahoo! December 2002
Pyra Labs Google 2003
Overture Services, Inc. Yahoo! $1.7bl July 2003
Keyhole Inc. Google 2004
Kelkoo Yahoo! March 25, 2004
Picasa Google July 2004
Oddpost.com Yahoo! July 9, 2004
Upcoming.org Yahoo! October 5, 2005
Skype eBay $2.6bn October 14, 2005
Ask.com IAC/InterActiveCorp $1.85bn March 2005
Flickr Yahoo! $30-35mil March 2005
DialPad Communications Yahoo! June 14, 2005
MySpace News Corporation $580mil July 2005
Konfabulator Yahoo! July 25, 2005
dodgeball Google May 2005
Friends Reunited ITV plc £120mil December 6, 2005
del.icio.us Yahoo! $15-$30mil December 9, 2005
Webjay Yahoo! January 9, 2006
SketchUp Google March 14, 2006
Writely Google March 9, 2006
Youtube Google $1.65bn October 9, 2006 (announced)

Source