Top 10 technology acquisitions

2. Sun and Oracle
Oracle's $7.4bn (£4.76bn) takeover of Sun Microsystems, which was completed in January of this year, has widely been seen as a sad end for the latter company, credited with creating the market for high-performance Risc-based Unix workstations back in the 1980s.

Oracle promised much from the acquisition, indicating it would create a synergy from its own enterprise software and Sun's high-end server and workstation hardware. However, things soon turned sour as Oracle laid off large numbers of Sun employees and stopped supporting projects such as OpenSolaris.

Oracle has recently signalled its intention to use its hardware and software expertise to build a complete, integrated datacentre technology stack for enterprise customers.

1. HP and Compaq
HP's merger with Compaq in 2002 was seen as one of the most significant moves of the decade at the time, costing HP $25bn (£16bn) and bringing together two of the biggest names in the computing industry.

However, while the merger led to HP becoming the top PC maker in the world, things did not go smoothly, with many HP shareholders and co-founder Walter Hewlett publicly opposing the merger.

Today, the Compaq name survives only on some HP laptops, but the Proliant server line is a legacy of the company, as was the iPaq line of PDAs and smartphones until recently.

Ironically, Compaq had itself swallowed up minicomputer maker DEC only four years earlier, a move that some blamed for Compaq's financial difficulties leading to the HP merger.