Acquisition Exit: it's not just Google & Yahoo

These deals do happen all the time, but you don't hear about most of them because they're not in the sexy (resisting urge to say bottom joke) Web 2.0/social networking space.

Instead, they tend to happen in more boring (but profitable) areas like accounting or security software.

This site (a boutique broker specializing in software acquisitions) has a list of recent M&A deals along those lines: http://corumgroup.com/CorumTransactions.asp

question: do companies have dedicated teams to go out and find small companies to eat, or it more or less a random process?

Google and Yahoo are most startups' exit strategies, according to conventional wisdom. And now we've seen a few articles about how Google and Yahoo really aren't acquiring very many companies.

But Google and Yahoo are hardly the only companies that buy companies.

How about Amazon? Amazon buys companies, and is probably going to buy a lot more. Ebay. News Corp (Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace and wants to buy more). VeriSign. Cisco (it acquires small companies all the time!).

And it's not just the big boys. You don't necessarily need a serial acquirer -- for instant, stock site TheStreet bought out startup StockPickr. Private-but-successful startup Six Apart (Type Pad, Moveable Type, for those of you who've been asleep) bought out LiveJournal.

This post isn't just a retort to the "better find another exit strategy" meme.

What other companies do acquisitions? I suspect I've barely scratched the surface here.