Question
That's what I'm hearing. I looked at the shopping.com site and I'm wondering how they will combine things. eBay has said that this will help their sellers find more buyers.... will be interesting to see how it all works.
Answer
Well, if it points people to ebay auctions and stores, that helps.
I've never used the site, so I don't know how popular it is.
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found an article
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/...-Million.xhtml
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Here is an announcement from Bill Cobb came in the same ebay groups announcement the mail change was in:
The eBay user "abnews*ebay.com" has sent the following message to the group: eBay Announcements
from: abnews*ebay.com
to: eBay Announcements
***A Message from Bill Cobb***
June 01, 2005 | 03:00PM PST/PT
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
=================================================
Answer
Pulling out the Google thorn
Commentary: EBay's acquisition relieves some search pain
By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch
Last Update: 12:15 PM ET June 2, 2005
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- EBay and Shopping.com have a similar thorn in their sides -- Google.
By combining, the two have taken a step to remove that thorn.
EBay relies on Google (GOOG: news, chart, profile) for increasingly-expensive traffic. For buyers -- who know what they're looking for -- search engines are faster and easier to use. It's no wonder eBay saw monthly traffic decline nine out of the last 10 months, according to comScore Networks.
At the same time, the auction house is losing merchants to the search engine, as savvy users on the Web realize that eBay and Google are essentially doing the same thing -- bringing buyers and sellers together. Moreover, for big sellers, Google's paid-search business model is far more capitalistic and fair.
Like eBay, Shopping.com (SHOP: news, chart, profile) relies heavily on Google for increasingly expensive traffic. At the same time, 45% of the comparison-shopping engines' revenue comes from Google. As a distribution partner, Shopping.com gets a revenue share for advertisements on its site that come from Google's 150,000-plus marketer-customers.
On the Web, Google's been a main source of traffic to places like eBay and Shopping.com, and, of course, elsewhere.
Now that Shopping.com is coming under the eBay fold, are the two better off? On the face of it, yes.
From the seller perspective
EBay's large sellers want more buyers. Shopping.com gives them an audience of 22 million, up 15% from last year. EBay's largest sellers want a capitalist system, which eBay doesn't offer, but Shopping.com does. On eBay, items are ranked higher based on auction timeframe, and not how much a merchant is willing to pay to be ranked higher. Sellers on Shopping.com can bid up for better placement. So buying shopping.com solves this challenge for eBay.
At the same time, Shopping.com can now take eBay's millions of listings and replace Google's listings. That's the thinking of Scott Devitt, an analyst at Legg Mason.
From the buyer perspective
So, do the two solve the buyer or traffic acquisition reliance on Google?
To the extent that Shopping.com can redirect its traffic back to eBay, those are millions of customers that are either introduced to eBay or reintroduced to eBay without having to pay Google. The same goes for eBay's ability to direct its audience of 63 million unique visitors to Shopping.com.
EBay (EBAY: news, chart, profile) is in some ways following the multiple-brands model of the world's biggest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores (WMT: news, chart, profile) , with its Sam's Club discount stores. Similarly, EBay will essentially be operating a second brand -- Shopping.com.
Buy Overstock.com?
But there's another candidate for an eBay multi-brand strategy.
I've thought for some months now that Overstock.com (OSTK: news, chart, profile) , with its nascent auction site and fast-growing audience base, would be a good way for eBay to take out a potential competitor and move into a multiple-brand strategy.
To be sure, Overstock is not profitable and it owns its inventory, and inventory doesn't touch eBay's hands. And of course management styles can always clash.
But with Overstock's traffic doubling to 15 million in April -- nearly a quarter of eBay's traffic -- eBay would be foolish not to consider that model. Moreover, Overstock is expected to generate $837 million in sales, or about 6 times the expected sales of Shopping.com this year. But Overstock's value is only 1.3 times the purchase price eBay offered for Shopping.com.
In this ever-consolidating world on the Web, Overstock would be an interesting addition to the eBay fold.
And it could still happen.
But either way, the success of any deal relies on execution, not the initial handshakes.