[hngiszmo]

those were aquisitions by Google. Now a list of Microsoft:

[slg]

There are some success stories even just limiting it to enterprise software. PowerPoint, Visio, and many products in the Dynamics family started out as acquisitions.

[TheLogothete]

Not to mention SQL Server.

[pianoben]

The Acompli (now Outlook Mobile) acquisition has gone quite nicely so far (source: am on said team). That's just one recent example; there are quite a few MS products that came on board via acquisition.

[jurip]

The HockeyApp acquisition hasn't caused any pain so far.

[JupiterMoon]

Onenote

[scholia]

Not bought in, I think....

"OneNote started as an email exchange between myself and Steven Sinofsky, the Senior VP for Office, Nov 27, 2000."

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2004/01/30/one...