Some notable earlier episodes:

- 2000: Internet upstart America Online (AOL) bids to acquire Time Warner, a venerable US media empire. Initially valued at 150 billion dollars, the deal is finally consummated as a merger.

However in the same year the collapse of a stock bubble based on Internet stocks takes the wind out of the market for several years and AOL's star gradually fades.

- 2005: With interest in Internet based stocks picking up again, Australian-American media mogul Rupert Murdoch buys MySpace, a music and networking site popular with young people, for 580 million dollars.

A year later, the Internet giant Google pays well over that sum -- 900 million dollars -- for the right to own search and advertising operations on MySpace.

Also in 2005, Yahoo pays a billion dollars for a 40-percent share in Alibaba.com, an Internet retailer in China, and the online auction firm EBay acquires Skype, an Internet telephony start-up, for 2.5 billion dollars.

- 2006: Google buys YouTube, a fast-growing user-created video site, for 1.65 billion dollars in stock. On the same day, the two firms announce an agreement with major studios to post copyrighted music videos on the site.

- 2007: Facebook, an upscale version of Myspace founded by university students, becomes the latest big thing in "social networking." In October, Microsoft takes a 240-million-dollar stake in Facebook, a deal which values the company at 15 billion dollars.

- February 2008: Microsoft bids 44.6 billion dollars to acquire Yahoo, as both companies seek ways to counter the dominance of Google.