Some of the larger portals, guides, and search engines have made similar moves. Lycos acquired Tripod. Excite bought Webcrawler and Magellan among others. This is the ex-George Bush firm that owns fish processing plants. Both times the offer was all stock.
Nobody needs five flavors of vanilla.
Beauty in the Web space is more than skin deep, a problem the portals face as they're a mile wide and inch deep. The key to Web value is in creating meaningful user experiences, knowing how to use the space and not crowding it with link after link after link. We're linked out. Meaningful experiences are in short supply. Enter the vertical plays, the inch wide and mile deep sites.