eBay to Buy Shopping.com
Interesting.
Forbes (this is the best of the early articles).
I’m sure we’ll hear more about the strategic implications of the deal over the next few days.
UPDATE: Text of letter from eBay to its seller community:
“To Our Community:
I’m excited to let you know that eBay plans to acquire Shopping.com
(www.shopping.com), a leader in online comparison shopping and consumer reviews.
Many of you have been evolving your businesses on the Internet and we want to continue to help you succeed. We also recognize that more eBay sellers are starting to have success with in-season products. This acquisition will give you, our sellers, a new sales channel and access to a new set of buyers. Shopping on Shopping.com will be enhanced by the addition of eBay’s listings to the product selection already available on the site.
Shopping.com also provides consumer-generated product and merchant reviews on Epinions (www.epinions.com). We’ve been hearing from eBay buyers that product reviews would help you make better buying decisions. Epinions is complementary to eBay’s community-driven marketplace; there are currently more than a million consumer product reviews available to Epinions and Shopping.com users.
As you may know, the acquisition is subject to regulatory and Shopping.com shareholder approvals. We expect our acquisition of Shopping.com to close in the third quarter of 2005. We will work with the Shopping.com team to refine plans as the deal closes. We’ll make sure to keep you informed.
Stay tuned!
Sincerely,
Bill Cobb
President, eBay North America”
UPDATE 2: Interesting critique of the deal from Motley Fool.
An Israeli perspective (and some commentary from Dan Ciporin).
A scorecard of who made what.
UPDATE 3: Epinions has posted an FAQ.
UPDATE 4: ComputerWorld Australia article with more speculation.
Shopzilla sold to Scripps.