Consolidation has always been a significant force in computer technology for a variety of reasons. It has also been something mythologized to promote the winners as visionary geniuses, even when someone else had the brilliant idea.

One such story: Microsoft would sell a personal computer operating system to IBM, kickstarting the former's path to economic glory. First, the mother of Bill Gates, who knew the then-chairman of IBM through mutual charity work, made the introduction. IBM wanted an operating system. Gates, co-founder Paul Allen, and others at the startup said, "No problem," and then bought from Seattle Computer Systems what would become MS-DOS and ship on all of IBM's desktop computers.

Advertising giant Google? Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had interesting ideas about ranking individual search results by prominence and also advertising. But AdSense, the commercial hit that lets third-parties in on Google ad sales, came with the 2003 acquisition of Applied Semantics.