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Companies get bought all the time without hitting the top of Techmeme.

The companies that're commonly talked about on HN are just a small subset of the startup world.

For example, look at this list. How many companies do you recognize?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle

Does anyone provide data on startup acquisitions each year? I know the amounts are usually private, but the numbers always seem to leak out (or at least estimated numbers). It would be interesting to do some data processing to look for trends and averages.

after being curious myself, remembered that crunchbase has some data. Around page 50 by price you get the $17m http://www.crunchbase.com/acquisitions?page=50&sort=pric...

http://www.crunchbase.com/acquisitions?page=51&sort=pric...

There are a lot of "boring" strategic acquisitions that happen in the 10-20m area. Small companies that are viewed as useful groups for large organizations to own, because they need/want the capability, or they're interested in preventing a competitor from grabbing it up.