Mike Masnick makes great points in this regard, the best of which is (emphasis mine):

So, for startups whose strategy is to get acquired by Google (and, I should note, if you start with that strategy, you’re probably going to fail)…

I have no opinion on the specific matter. But, just the other day a colleague and I discussed the fact that since Google has such an enormous (and ongoing) investment in proprietary computing infrastructure, they might be vulnerable to “evolutionary jumps” in computing technology some time in the future.

From The Wall Street Journal:

With October ending in two days and the books closed on the final Merger Monday of the month today, it looks as if a rebound could be underway.

I imagine the rebound includes senior and sub financing term sheets that look like they’re from five years ago. In other words, either deal pricing has come down, or we’ll see a lot of bankruptcies in just a few years time (as if we won’t already).

There were a few M&A deals in the security space during 2006. If bankers have their way, we’ll see an acceleration of deal activity in 2007. Why else would analysts be floating such an idea?

With Microsoft pushing further into the security space via niche acquisition and rebranding, I suspect we are going to see more and more M&A activity to counteract the gorilla’s hunger.

The latest (via The Register), Secure Computing has purchased CipherTrust, a leader in messaging security. This comes just as Microsoft and Yahoo IM networks converge, along with threats from hackers.

Another - SurfControl gets BlackSpider, which adds appliance-based on-demand network security to SurfControl’s software portfolio.

That’s two less deals for the so-called predators to get hold of, but I doubt that will slow them down much.