[drusenko]

Almost all popular Google products (other than search and Gmail) have come from acquisition: Maps, Analytics, Google Apps, Android, Blogger, Picasa, YouTube, Postini, reCAPTCHA, etc.

My good friends Robby & Wayne's company, Zenter, was acquired by Google in 2007. While Robby has since left, Wayne is now a very respected eng manager in charge of a very important project, so I would argue that acquisition was successful for them.

So while many acquisitions do not work out well (and usually loudly), it would be a big mistake to pretend that applies to all acquisitions.

[bambax]

You're right; some acquisitions survive as real products and it would be a mistake to call them "failures".

I guess what the OP means is that price alone is not a sufficient criteria to judge whether an acquisition was a success. If you sell your company for a large amount of money, but it gets shut down, that's not "success" (although it's certainly much better for you than closing down without any money).

[shalmanese]

Same with Adobe. Everything in their creative suite except Illustrator was the result of an acquisition. They had a lot of botched and failed acquisitions over the years but there's no question they wouldn't be where they were today if not for a series of very smart acquisitions.