Many of you may recall, last May and June I wrote a series of articles for AOL's BloggingStocks featuring the 25 stocks for the NEXT 25 years. The genesis of the series was a USA Today article that highlighted the best 25 stocks from the previous 25 years. Since the series ended in late June we have had three of out top 25 stocks acquired by larger companies. We now have a fourth company being acquired: Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) has offered $300 million for Audible (NASDAQ: ADBL).

Recall that the other three acquisitions are Kyphon acquired by Medtronic (NYSE: MDT), Opsware by Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Color Kinetics by Philips of the Netherlands. All three on one level ticked me off as I would have loved to have seen them develop into large cap companies. On the other level, investors made quick returns of 50%+. Audible's return to those that bought based on the recommendation I wrote back on May 3, 2007, only made 20%. Still a very good return, especially in this present environment, but of course, I want more!

Audible is the leader in the "spoken word" content deliverable via an MP3 device. Its website offers customers best seller books, not-so best seller books, and weekly/monthly periodicals delivered to the customers' MP3 player or iPod. Audible was the exclusive spoken word content provider to the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iTunes store. Apple represented almost 33% of Audibles revenues.

CEO Don Katz has led Audible through the critical early adopter phase as the company had a loyal customer base of around 400,000 strong. To get to the next level of critical mass, Audible was not equipped as Amazon will be. For sake of full disclosure, both of my books Stop Losing Money Today and Baby Boomer Investing...Where do we go from here? are both available from Audible and Apple's iTunes -- which my kids think is really cool!

So another one of our Top 25 stocks for the NEXT 25 years is gone. The returns were just okay, but it does demonstrate how larger companies are always on the hunt for smaller, nimbler but innovative companies. In Baby Boomer Investing...Where do we go from here? I highlight 41 growth stories spread over five growth industries. Since the book was published in December, 2006, six of the 41 companies I wrote about have been acquired. In the meantime, back to work for yours truly to replace Audible in the top 25 list.

Georges Yared writes about great growth stocks today in GameOn Investing.