The 3rd type of acquisition (Business) is a lil generic and should be broken down into a few more parts.<p>IMHO, in the tech industry, I observed many times that if a company acquires another purely from a business perspective, it is either:<p>(a) Customer/Market - The acquired company has a huge and highly desirable market share,demographics,etc that the bigger company would like to "acquire". Also sometimes, it is simply to get the "pageviews". I.e. Google acquiring Blogger/Blogspot (community) or the myriad of blogging companies that AOL has acquired (market share).<p>(b) Expanding - The acquirer would like to expand from their core business and the best way to do this to acquire a company that is the best in the field. I.e. Apple acquires Quattro (advertising), Google acquires Android (mobile).