According to the Wall Street Journal and AllThingsD, Microsoft will announce its acquisition of Skype for $8.5 billion later this morning morning at 8 am ET.

This will be the biggest acquisition Microsoft has ever made.

It's also one of the craziest -- Microsoft already has products that offer the same functionality, and apart from Skype's brand and some slightly different peer-to-peer technology, Microsoft would be getting almost nothing new out of the deal.

Well, it would be acquiring some customers -- at about $1,000 a pop.

But Microsoft is no stranger to crazy acquisitions. Here's a walk through Microsoft's 15 biggest acquisitions -- until later this morning, at least -- and what happened to them.