One of the most interesting trends in startup land is the rise of the "acqui-hire," which is when a big company buys a smaller company just to get its employees. For instance, Facebook acquired New York-startups Hot Potato and Drop.io just for the companies' founders. It pretty much killed the product they developed. Or, more recently, Google bought Milk, the app development company from Kevin Rose. It killed all of Milk's projects and put the team to work on Google+.
