Acquired...

The first Acquiring deal I heard about which made me really angry was when Autodesk the creator of AutoCAD acquired Maya from Alias. But before that 3D Max was acquired also by Audtodesk... Adobe acquired Macromedia... and now... Microsoft is planning to buy Yahoo engine!
I'm sure the list of these acquiring businesses are more...
What I find irritating about them is:
:: It's a capitalist move... where the rich are getting richer... and I'm anti-Capitalism to the bones.
:: It strangles the scope of choices and of competitions...
:: It limits variety... for example if we think of Adobe programs, certain sets of icons, flow, interfaces come to our mind which are different than those of Macromedia. Each company or brand had it's own identity but by merging... one identity will have to give up for another.
:: It creates giant bodies... that would make those already established even more established as apposed to those new comers...
:: It puts the user second after making MORE money!!
:: I >heart< open source mentality.