Rumour Mill: IAC in Talks to Acquire Nextag

Back in June when I predicted that Experian would buy PriceGrabber, I also pondered whether IAC would buy Nextag. I'm not making this stuff up but... rumor has it that IAC (or maybe its subsidiary LendingTree) is in talks to buy Nextag. I was right but it may have been...

Find It, Pronto!

IAC finally launched its shopping comparison software (not website) this week. It is called Pronto, not Red Carpet as previously rumored (or previously named). Brian Smith has a nice write up on it at Comparison Engines so I won't repeat what he wrote. This may or may not scratch IAC...

eBay Buys Skype for $2.6 Billion Plus

It's old news by now... eBay closed its acquisition of Skype for $2.6 billion plus up to $1.5 billion in performance bonuses over the next two to three years. That is huge. Not just the price for a 3 year old company but the impact of this transaction. Do you...

Shopping Comparison Scorecard

In case you missed it, Scripps announced it acquisition of Shopzilla (formerly Bizrate) today and eBay announced it was buying Shopping.com last week. That makes for slightly more than $1 BILLION in shopping comparison purchases in under a week. The rest of the market: C|NET bought MySimon years ago. Yahoo...

Eternal Logins at Online Stores

Bruce Schneier posted an interesting piece on logins that never expire with online stores. I've heard people talk about how merchants try to get the lifetime value of the customer by first getting the customer to register and then sending an never-ending batch of e-mails to get the customer to...