Yahoo! have completed a deal to buy internet comparison shopping portal Kelkoo for €475 million (~US$575, ~UK£320), as part of a strategy to expand their services in Europe. Yahoo! will buy up all of the Kelkoo’s share capital for cash, and is expected to keep all 250 Kelkoo staff, making the company a wholly-owned subsidiary.
Kelkoo allows users to search across 2500 internet shops for 3 million products and compare prices for the best deal. The service has been profitable since 2002, and makes its money by charging merchants for referrals. The site was founded in France in 1999 and has merged and acquired similar services across Europe ever since.
“Commerce has emerged as a key component of search, and the combination of Web search, product search and comparison shopping will help further Yahoo!’s goal to create the most comprehensive and best user experience on the Web globally,” said Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive officer, Yahoo! Inc. “Kelkoo will add depth and breadth to Yahoo!’s integrated network of services for consumers, and adds another set of powerful tools for marketers seeking to reach them.”
Kelkoo is currently operational in nine European states, reaches some 10% of internet users there, and claims to be the largest e-commerce service operating out of Europe.
Kelkoo’s press release
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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