Microsoft To Buy Ciao.com Price Comparison Firm
Microsoft has agreed to buy Greenfield Online, owner of European price comparison website ciao.com, for about $486 million to boost its Internet search and e-commerce business in Europe.Microsoft, whose $47.5 billion bid to buy Yahoo earlier this year failed after a protracted battle, said on Friday the acquisition should benefit its Live Search platform.
Internet search is dominated by Google, which has 62% of the global search market and 79% in Europe, according to the most recent data published by Web usage tracker ComScore.
Microsoft has a 2% market share in Europe and 9% worldwide, behind both Google and Yahoo. In Europe, Microsoft is also outranked by online auction site eBay and Russia’s Yandex.
“The team at Ciao has built a passionate consumer community based on intuitive technology and extensive merchant relationships that we believe will deliver incremental benefit to the Microsoft Live Search platform,” said Microsoft’s vice president for Windows and online services, Tami Reller.
Ciao.com offers advice on purchases, mainly of consumer electronics, and encourages users to join a network of shopping experts to share opinions. It makes its revenues from e-commerce, merchant referrals and advertising sales.
Microsoft’s offer of $17.50 per share betters an earlier proposal by media-focused U.S. buyout firm Quadrangle Group to acquire the company for $15.50 a share, and represents a slight premium to Greenfield’s closing price of $17.25 on Thursday.
On August 26, Greenfield had said it had received a $17.50 per share offer but did not reveal from whom. The latest offer represents a premium of about 10% over Greenfield’s closing share price on August 25.
Microsoft said it had agreed to sell off Greenfield Online’s main business, which surveys consumer opinion online and sells the results to market researchers, to an unnamed financial buyer.
The companies expect both deals to close during the fourth quarter of 2008. Completion of the Greenfield sale to Microsoft does not depend on Microsoft’s disposal of the online survey business, the two companies said.
Courtesy of Reuters Group.
Reader Comments.
No comments yet
Leave a Comment
Article Sponsor
More News
-
Loading ...
Latest News
- Hulu’s Bringing Its “A” Game But… March 19th 2010 ADOTAS – Hulu’s sales team is actively subverting the ad [...] more »
- Yelp! A class-action suit? March 19th 2010 ADOTAS – One of three civil suits against Yelp filed [...] more »
- Viacom Accuses Google; Testing Digital Millennium Copyright Act March 19th 2010 Viacom has accused Google of turning a blind eye to [...] more »
- Google to Leave China April 10th? March 19th 2010 ADOTAS – According to the China Business News, Google Inc [...] more »
- [x+1] Creates The Smartest Tagging System Around March 18th 2010 ADOTAS – Today, if you happen to be at the [...] more »
- IAB’s Video Standards Tackled By ADTECH March 18th 2010 ADOTAS – ADTECH, a part of AOL Advertising and an [...] more »
- Google Search and Mobile and….TV? Oh My! March 18th 2010 ADOTAS – Google wants to dominate your screens…. Not just [...] more »
Features
- Growing Pains March 19th 2010
- For Better or For Worse? March 18th 2010
- Yahoo! Wants to Get More Personal March 17th 2010
- Creative Considerations for the iPad March 16th 2010
- Amazon Leaves Colorado Affiliates Out in the Cold March 12th 2010
Spotlight
AdBidCentral’s CEO, Vivek Veeraraghavan Talks Openly*What was the inspiration to start AdBidCentral? The conditions that inspired AdBidCentral came from a variety of factors in my personal [...] more...
Reader Favorites
Classifieds
- Sr Director, Marketing Services
- Senior Web Analyst
- Account Director
- Director of Analytics
- Manager, Business and Trade Media Relations
Recent Comments
- Jedd Gould: I think you miss the point. Publications have to charge because the content most are
- Gavin Dunaway: They're similar, but Ning is more a competitor to Facebook and MySpace while StumbleUpon considers
- Steve Feldman: Does StumbleUpon compete with and does essentially what Ning networks does?
- Bulent: I wonder how many of the clients would accept a media plan, that would -as
