I was going to research and analyze the various companies that the search engines have acquired over the years, creating some pretty charts along the way. I still may do some analysis, but of course, midway through my research I found a much nicer chart than I could ever hope to build. So, instead of creating one, I'll just pass along some link love to whoever created this awesome timeline chart. It's interactive, in that you can use your mouse to scroll through the time line. Below is a reduced screenshot, with each colored dot representing one of the big 3 (Google, Yahoo, MSN).
You can check out this incredible timeline chart of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo acquisitions here.
Now I'll go back into my hidey-hole and see if I can figure out what it all means for the future of search engine technology. 
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Next may be the human engines such as Mahalo, ChaCha, InfoCream or else the PPIV (Professionally Produced Internet Video) sites such as funnyordie, crackle etc. Nice chart. You can see the acceleration in the visual.
[...] Visual Timeline of Search Engine AcquisitionsSEO Scoop has put a useful map over search engine acquisitions (July 18 2007) [...]