There are 2 companies which Yahoo! acquired: 1) Overture. If you look at the financial reports, nearly 50% of Yahoo's revenue is from search. They acquired Ove

There are 2 companies which Yahoo! acquired: 1) Overture. If you look at the financial reports, nearly 50% of Yahoo's revenue is from search. They acquired Overture for ~1B 2) They acquired RocketMail (essentially Yahoo! mail). Most people I know, when they think of Yahoo, they think of Yahoo! mail. So, while its easy to say they messed up many acquisitions (esp the infamous 3B offer for Broadcast.com), the 2 acquisitions they made is what keeps them "in the game" today. You win some acquisitions, you lose some. Just like investing, if you make few smart ones, it can easily pay off and create more value than the money spent on many failed ones. Same with Google - Youtube was handled very well, but many acquisitions are essentially just shut down or never integrated into other products(Dodgeball,Jaiku etc)