Microsoft paid $6.3B for aQuantive — five years later it wrote off $6.2B

In 2007, Google was taking online advertising, and Microsoft wanted a rival position. On 13 August 2007 it completed the all-cash acquisition of aQuantive, the largest independent online-ad company, for just over $6.3 billion — its largest acquisition ever, at more than double the price Google had paid for DoubleClick about a month earlier. Former employees told the press the motivation was defensive: keep aQuantive away from other suitors.

Five years later, on 2 July 2012, Microsoft's 8-K announced a non-cash charge of approximately $6.2 billion: an impairment of goodwill in its Online Services Division, 'mostly related to its 2007 aQuantive acquisition.' The filing was blunt about where the goodwill had come from — 'substantially the result of the 2007 acquisition of aQuantive' — and about why it was going: the deal 'did not accelerate growth to the degree anticipated.'

The charge landed in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012 and turned the quarter red: Microsoft reported a net loss of $492 million, against a $5.9 billion profit in the same quarter a year earlier. Of the $6.3 billion paid for aQuantive, $6.2 billion was written off. The company's statement kept the people and the tools and conceded the rest: the business 'did not perform relative to our projections.'