Microsoft Pays $6 Billion For aQuantive

Microsoft is acquiring advertising network aQuantive, the parent company to Avenue A | Razorfish, Atlas and DRIVEpm, for roughly $6 billion in an all-cash transaction, the company said this morning. aQuantive is a public company (AQNT) and had a market cap of just $2.8 billion as of yesterday.

The “big-three” seem to be in a buying war. Google bought Doubleclick just last month, then Yahoo! purchased RightMedia in the same month. aQuantive must have some apparent draw for Microsoft to pay twice as much as Google paid for the well known Doubleclick.

Source: Tech Crunch