#5 Tellme Networks

Purchased for: $800 million

Date: March 14, 2007

Tellme  Networks specializes in telephone-based applications. It established an information number, operating by voice prompts and speech-recognition software, which provided time-of-day announcements, weather forecasts, brief news and sports summaries, business searches, stock market quotations, driving directions, and similar amenities.

Soon after Microsoft bought the company, it saw the entire concept of Tellme become somewhat irrelevant with the rise of the mobile Web, all despite the company's original business model being aimed at the kind of voice-assisted mobile search that we now get with Siri and Google Now.

Verdict: Miss.

#4 aQuantive

Purchased for: $6.3 billion

Date: August 13, 2007

aQuantive was a digital marketing service and technology company. According to Advertising Age magazine, in 2005 it ranked 14th in terms of revenue among advertising agencies worldwide. Microsoft acquired the company for $6.3 billion, the largest acquisition in Microsoft's history until its 2011 purchase of Skype. aQuantive became part of Microsoft's newly-created Advertiser and Publisher Solutions (APS) Group.

On July 2, 2012, Microsoft announced that it would take a $6.2 billion writedown, mostly related to the 2007 acquisition of aQuantive, nearly the entire cost of the original acquisition.

Verdict: Huge miss.    

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