7 Comments

Shopping Comparison Scorecard

Jun 6, 2005
by

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 owns Kelkoo (Europe) and has Yahoo Shopping.
AOL built In-Store
Google launched Froogle
MSN has MSN Shopping
ShopLocal was bought by the big 3 newspaper chains (really an offline store play)

Who’s left?
PriceGrabber: Have you been following Experian’s acquisition binge? PriceGrabber fits nicely with LowerMyBills, MetaReward and Affiliate Fuel. AutoByTel would be a nice complement as well.

Nextag: I don’t think there is much to buy but someone may want it. Maybe IAC will grab it after PriceGrabber is taken. IAC already owns Entertainment Book which should have gotten into this business years ago. If Barry Diller has left the running of this business to the EB guys in Michigan, don’t expect much.

There you have it. I predict Experian buys PriceGrabber (or PG gets greedy and misses the boat like so many smaller companies before it).

What’s your guess?

About David Lewis

David Lewis is the CEO and founder of 77Blue which operates online shopping websites. Prior to that, he worked in business development at GoTo / Overture. David was a product manager and accountant in past lives. In 2006, David won Commission Junction’s Horizon Award for Innovation and was a finalist for Linkshare’s Golden Link Award. You can find David on Twitter @thedavidlewis.

Twitter: thedavidlewis
Filed under: eCommerce
  • http://www.jangro.com Scott Jangro

    David, don't forget Valueclick's purchase of PriceRunner who are big in Europe. They've been fashionably beta testing in the US, but it looks like it's launched now.

  • http://www.molanderassoc.com Jeff Molander

    What does Scripps know about what they call search… running a business like Shopzilla?

    (Shopzilla is really more of a search-based shopping comparison *destination* site IMO… although I suppose they sure do buy a lot of paid media exposure in search engines!)

  • http://www.corante.com/goyami/archives/2005/06/08/ebay_to_buy_shoppingcom.php Goyami

    eBay to buy Shopping.com

    Last week eBay announced they will purchase Shopping.com for $620 million in cash. Shopping.com is a comparison shopping and customer review site that went public in October of 2004 at $18 per share. The buyout places a 20% premium on…

  • http://www.molanderassoc.com Jeff Molander

    Oh… one more thing. I'm still waiting for the promise of AOL/Time Warner to come true in wider form. Let's see the packaging of broadcast and click/Web media sold to the P&G's of the world. Is the timing on this finally upon us?

    Media convergence!

  • http://www.appliancesuk.com Natalie Zaponik

    Everyone in the price engine sector in merging our sharing feeds. Take a look at the newest online shopping site in europe http://www.unbeatable.co.uk. this site is using part of shopping.co's feed and part of there own. I think the sector is going to grow but the amount of actual new website will decrease.

  • http://www.revenews.com/davidlewis/archives/001249.html ReveNews – David Lew

    A Match Made at Revenews?

    It's official! Experian has acquired PriceGrabber. The price tag was $485 million. It makes sense. Experian is about lead generation. PriceGrabber is really a lead gen engine for merchants with a shopping comparion UI. Here was my prediction last June:…

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