Company acquisitions and mergers

In the life of a company, big or small, in one chapter, they would be acquired or merged into a larger company for something to ideally benefit both or multiple entities together.

As such, it is imperative to archive the websites, sub-subdomains of said websites, and social media presences of said acquired companies because:

• The content is subject to:
  • Being changed or altered
    • Something as simple as adding an announcement to say that they've been acquired is a difference between a website pre-bought and a website post-bought.
  • Being removed
    • In most instances, the acquired companies would have their website domains be redirected to the company's website that is responsible for the acquisition;
      For example, http://www.permabit.com/ redirects to https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-acquires-permabit-assets-eases-barriers-cloud-portability-data-deduplication-technology?sc_cid=701f2000000RTVRAA4 because Permabit was acquired by Red Hat in 2017 July.
    • In certain instances, an acquired company's content of their internet presence is subject to removal, partially or fully;
      For example, on 2020 March 31, with Dark Sky (weather app) being acquired by Apple,
      the acquired company's sub-domain, https://blog.darksky.net/ has deleted all of their blog posts except for the announcement of being acquired;
      compare with https://web.archive.org/web/20200309082304/https://blog.darksky.net/ (last snapshot pre-announcement)
      to https://web.archive.org/web/20200331173201/https://blog.darksky.net/ (snapshot of post-announcement).

There are two ways of finding companies being acquired or merged to another company:

• 1) Make a web search query with phrases or keywords through a web search engine
  • Advantages
    • Smaller or more obscure company acquisitions are more likely to be found,
      often found from the acquired company's websites or social media accounts.
  • Disadvantages
    • The amount of unrelated or mislabeled content when searching is higher than normal,
      as it is one of the quirks of web search engines displaying results through a countless series of algorithms.
  • Here are a list of commonly used keywords and phrases to use to make a search query:
    • acquire
    • acquired
    • acquisition
    • bought out
    • merger
    • merging
    • -sports
      • It's recommended to use this line as part of the search query since without this phrase,
        the search attempt will bring up results of sport players being traded or joining a team;
        However, this may remove results on sports-oriented company acquisitions or mergers.

• 2) Browse through articles or press releases from various sources
  • Advantages
    • The amount of unrelated or mislabeled content when searching is lower than normal, with some websites due to curation or verification.
  • Disadvantages
    • Smaller or more obscure company acquisitions are unlikely to be covered by more larger resources.
  • Here is a list of various resources of where to find news on company acquisitions and mergers;
    They are sorted by category, in alphabetical order, except for the 'General' category:
    • General
      • Benzinga (existed since 2010)
      • BusinessWire (Limit: only up to 20 pages, 25 entries per page, 500 entries of the most recent articles)
      • GlobalNewsWire, Inc.
      • Federal Trade Commission (Special!)
    • Beauty
      • BeautyMatter
    • Finanical
      • Crowdfund Insider
      • Insurance Journal
      • Private Equity Wire (existed since 2002)
    • Food & Drink
      • blogTO | Toronto
      • CSP Magazine
      • Food Business Africa
      • Food Business News
    • Health
      • BioSpace (existed since 1985)
      • The Pharma Letter
    • Legal
      • Law360
    • Science
      • BioSpace (existed since 1985)
    • Technology
      • ChannelE2E
        • 'Technology Mergers, Acquisitions, IPOs, Exits and Funding' section
        • 'Technology Mergers and Acquisitions List' section
      • CollisionWeek
      • Data Economy (existed since 2016)
      • The Edge Singapore (existed since 2001)
      • Electrical Wholesaling
      • FinTech Futures
      • Mass Device
      • Security Sales & Integration (existed since 1979)
      • Rental Equipment Register
      • TechCrunch (existed since 2013)
      • Intelligence Community News (existed since 2013)