DigitMemo.com

See what sort of tone a company’s acquisitions set

The LibraryHouse blog has a nice summary of recent acquisitions (July 2006 through June 2007) by Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo!, roughly color coded by category:

One clear theme from this list is the importance of advertising. aQuantive and Rightmedia were two headline deals but ScreenTonic, Adscape, and AdInterax reinforce the notion that advertising is critical to all three.

Google’s acquisitions were arguably the most diverse, although this reflects their scattered product offerings. Also, these companies were operating in common consumer spaces such as photos (Neven Vision and Panoramio), mapping (Endoxon), collaboration (Jotspot), video (Youtube and possibly Marratech for video conferencing), peer to peer file sharing (Xunlei), and presentation software (Tonic Systems and Zenter). Yahoo had half as many acquisitions and they seemed to be more focused on content than technology. Companies like rivals.com (sport site), wretch (a Xanga equivalent from Taiwan), and Bix.com (American Idol on the web) appear to be aimed at purchasing audiences. This seems reasonable in a world where advertising is incredibly valuable.

Microsoft’s acquisitions look very different in comparison. With the exception of health-focused Azzyxi and Medstory, their other purchases generally aim to improve enterprise software experiences. Given the investment of their existing corporate customer base, it’s no surprise that they’re spending money to alleviate that pain.

Returning to the original question though, it certainly doesn’t look like Microsoft is gunning to become an industry leader in online media. While the above analysis does stop at June 07 and they subsequently acquired AdEcn (advertising platform), Parlano (collaboration), Jellyfish (shopping comparison) and Facebook, I’m very curious to see what will be next in their shopping cart.