Marcus Wohlsen/Wired  Yahoo's narrative arc as a company can be
defined by its acquisitions, which taken together also serve as
one take on the history of the web itself. In the Yahoo version
of that history, founders and backers of overvalued companies
enjoy huge exits while the buyer tends to learn too late that
its exuberance was irrational. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will soon
find out whether her company's $1.1 billion (£720 million)
purchase of Tumblr becomes the latest chapter in a saga littered
with mediocrity and failure. (1999) -- In one of the frothiest
moments of the first dot-com bubble, Yahoo bought a financially
unsuccessful internet radio startup for a reported $5.7 billion
(£3.7 million) in stock and made Mark Cuban very rich. The
service was rebranded Launchcast and has cycled through multiple
corporate partners as better ideas -- from the first Napster to
Spotify -- have made the very idea of "broadcasting" on the
internet obsolete.  Geocities (1999) -- When the first great
'90s nostalgia movi