I do wonder what this means for the wider industry. The fact that they finally got bought means that other methods to grow revenue are failing (compared to, say, 2-3 years ago), and now directly buying revenue has become the dominant way to grow.

When reading financial textbooks they talk about how this happens in the last stages of the business cycles, because it makes sense at those points : economy steadily worsening, but only slightly (easy to mask on company results, so companies appear attractive, but management knows they will be significantly less so in a year's time or so), combined, especially today, with the massive availability of cheap credit, and the idea that "rates will be lower for longer" (history, of course, teaches us they won't).

The purpose here has to be to conquer more of the market by limiting options and moving towards more consolidation.