aQuantive

Facebook has acquired Microsoft's Atlas Advertising Suite, a move to help marketers more effectively manage and measure campaigns across the social network's mobile and desktop properties. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed; Microsoft purchased aQuantive, the firm behind the Atlas technology, for $6.2 billion in 2007, but  AdAge  suggests Facebook paid out less than $100 million.

Online is a tough business, even for someone as big and supposedly skilled as Microsoft, which reportedly took a $6.2 billion charge in its last quarter to write down the value of an online advertising agency it purchased five years ago in its attempt to compete with Google for online dollars.