The second acquisition for today. AOL buys social network Bebo for $850 mio. A real bargain compared to Microsoft’s engagement in Facebook. Also this was a clever move because Bebo has made good investments in their mobile platform. Perhaps AOL can get ahead of Yahoo and Google on the mobile space.

What do large companies do when they identify a problem and can’t solve it themselves? They spend a lot of money for somebody else to do the job or acquire somebody that has done the job already.

AOL seems to be in desperate need of a European affiliate network. Last year the owners of Tradedoubler rejected AOL’s offer. This year an acquisition seems to go through: buy.at. It’s a UK-based affiliate network with rather basic technical features. Therefore I think that the 150 million dollars are overrated, just like the 900 million for Tradedoubler.