Bangalore:  Microsoft has acquired more than 146 companies starting from its first acquisition, of Forethought on June 29, 1987. Forethought developed a presentation program that would later be known as Microsoft PowerPoint.

Microsoft purchased more than ten companies a year, between 2005 and 2008, and it acquired 18 firms in 2006, the most in a single year, including Onfolio, Lionhead Studios, Massive Incorporated, ProClarity, Winternals Software, and Colloquis. Microsoft has made six acquisitions worth over one billion dollars: Skype (2011), aQuantive (2007), Fast Search & Transfer (2008), Navision (2002), Visio Corporation (2000), and Yammer (2012).

Read on to know about 8 Microsoft acquisitions and their biggest hits and misses as compiled by CNET.

#8 Visio

Purchased for: $1.375 billion

Date: January 7, 2000

Visio’s principal product was diagramming application software. It was acquired by Microsoft and is now in a division of that company, which continues to develop the application under the name Microsoft Visio. Microsoft acquired Visio for $1.4 billion stock swap, its largest acquisition to date.  Its diagram application was first designed specifically for Windows 95, under the Microsoft Office umbrella.

Though Visio is still a lesser known Office application, it's the company's preeminent flowchart software. It receives updates with every Office refresh and is still sold separately. It is now a part of Office 365, and has sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Verdict: Hit.

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