[ThrowawayR2]

Yep, a lot of techies fail to appreciate the extent to which this is true. For those who disagree and were around in 2000, where is Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Yahoo, AOL, and Netscape today?

[bigtones]

They were all acquired or merged for a lot of money - and they were all highly profitable companies. None of those businesses failed. That is just natural business evolution for successful businesses.

[1996]

I disagree, but I think it is a matter of perspective, if by "successful" you mean "do not end up in a bankrupcy sale".

But then by your metric, there are businesses that are "more than successful": they are not acquired, but acquire others instead