The Outright Taking

When the size difference is large enough, there is no negotiation, only consumption.

Predation is the plainest relationship in this atlas. One organism is simply too large, too fast, or too well-resourced relative to another, and it does not integrate its prey, share ground with it, or strike a bargain. It consumes it, and what is consumed does not persist as a distinct thing afterward.

The platform acquisition that keeps the product and discontinues the vendor.

Not every acquisition is the organelle path described elsewhere in this atlas, a capture that becomes a permanent, sustained part of a larger system. Some acquisitions exist purely to remove a competitor or absorb a feature, with no intention of sustaining what made the target distinct. The customers may be migrated. The product may survive as a checkbox in someone else's platform. The company, and the thing that made it worth building, does not.

The distinction from endosymbiosis is not the paperwork. It is whether anything the target built is kept alive as itself, or only stripped for parts.