A tale of two acquisition strategies - Google vs Microsoft

Update: Vanity Fair published a piercing story on Microsoft's lost decade today.

I tweeted a realization about Microsoft and Google's acquisitions over the last few years:

For every successful Google acquisition, Microsoft has a failed one. Missed opportunities abound in Steve Ballmer's Microsoft legacy.
— Manoj Mehta (@manojhatax) July 3, 2012

Here is a comparative list in some of the key areas of competition between the two companies:

Genre: Advertising
Applied Semantics, DoubleClick, AdMeld, AdMob; Google; Status: Heavily monetized; Successful
aQuantive; Microsoft; Status: Written off; Epic Failure

Genre: Social Platforms
Pyra Labs; Google; Status: Monetized as blogger.com; Successful
Groove Software; Microsoft; Status: Unclear; Mild Failure

Genre: Mobile Platforms
Android; Google; Status: Number 1 Smartphone OS in the World; Successful
Danger; Microsoft; Status: Decommissioned; Epic Failure

Genre: VoIP
Marratech, Gizmo5Google;; Status: Used in Google Talk and Google Hangout; Successful
Skype Software; Microsoft; Status: Monetization unclear; TBD

Bottom-line is my Microsoft investment is never going to reap rewards! Now had I put that money in Google or Apple, I would have retired already.

Sources:
[1] List of acquisitions by Google
[2] List of acquisitions by Microsoft