Microsoft betters offer of Quadrangle to buy Ciao

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. Microsoft also bought Jellyfish some time ago, which they integrated into their Product Search. This is the second sign that Microsoft is really acting on what their were saying a year ago (read my post on that).

Microsoft’s vice president for Windows and online services, Tami Reller about Ciao:

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.

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 (read my former post on this) 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 percent 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.

Microsoft to provide cashback for Live Search

Just recently I mentioned that Microsoft was reviving Live Search for Products. And quite a while ago I wrote about Microsoft acquiring Jellyfish and I wondered when they would have integrated Jellyfish in Microsoft Search. Well, that time has come. Micrsoft just announced their Live Search cashback program (which is nothing new, Jellyfish is doing this for years now). However, it is a good PR stunt. Microsoft about their ‘new’ service:

Now you can get cashback savings by using Live Search to find great deals on the products you want from the stores that you know and trust.

Here you can see how it works. But, you could also go to Jellyfish 😉

Microsoft reviving Live Search for products?

According to Liveside.net Microsoft has just launched a brand new page for product search. Microsoft hasn’t improved product search for quite some time, so this might be a sign that they are taking this more seriously. In a previous post I mentioned that Steve Balmer acknowledged the importance of comparison shopping. He also said that they should be able to generate 25% in advertising.

Currently the Live Search for Products doesn’t work, which is pretty silly. Every search results in the following message:

Sorry, we did not find any product results for this search.

If Live Search for Products actually works then it would look like the image below. You are now able to refine the search results by user opinions, brands, category, and price range. Liveside.net concluded that in comparison to the old product search, search results have improved dramatically. Other improvements, although available before as part of the Shopping Search vertical already, include the ability to compare prices and view user ratings and reviews.

The new look of Product Search:

Let’s see if Microsoft will integrate other features soon. I still expect some kind of integration of Jellyfish in their Product Search.

Microsoft acquires Farecast?

Rumors are that Microsoft has acquired Farecast for approximately $115 million. Insiders say that Farecast had multiple offers to choose from. It is unclear what Microsoft wants to do with Farecast, currently the two companies already work together on MSN Travel.

What does Farecast actually do?

Farecast offers a unique service by providing its users with intelligent airfare predictions. Founded in 2003, Farecast has since gained very healthy funding from several venture funds totaling $20.6 million. Unlike other travel companies, Farecast predicts when a user should buy a ticket based upon 175 billion points of previous airfare data. Its engine can currently predict whether airfare goes up or down up to a week into the future with a claimed success rate of 70-75%. While Farecast has a lot of competition, they claim it is the only company which can predict future prices.
The site has recently expanded to providing the best deals on hotel room as well. Results from travel search sites like ReserveTravel, Orbitz, and CheapTicket, are shown on a map with prices and other hotel information. Farecase gives deal finders an idea if a specific hotel is overpriced or a good deal by marking overpriced hotels blue and attractively-priced hotels red.

Seattle based Farecast now also says to provide predictions in Europe. I have tried to find some predictions, but I couldn’t get it to work for European destination.

Below is a graph of a trip from Las Vegas to San Fransisco:

Microsoft to acquire Shopzilla?

It is becoming more likely that E.W. Scripps, (NYSE: SSP) will sell Shopzilla. More and more rumors tend to support this, although this is not the case according to CEO Ken Lowe… But if you read between the lines:

“Shopzilla is a top online comparison shopping service in the US… [but] I wish I could say it’s been all smooth sailing.” Competition has been fierce, slowing growth and crimping margins. Outwardly, the company is still optimistic about the business.”

Scripps paid $525 million for Shopzilla in June 2005, and if they can get anything close to that, their bankers will have earned their fees. The acquisition has been a bust: Shopzilla makes up half of Scripps’ interactive group, which has managed to see revenues and profits decrease in a booming online market. Not very promising!

According to sources within Microsoft, MSN wants to buy Shopzilla. Microsoft just acquired Jellyfish, so they could plan to merge Jellyfish with the large(r) user base of Shopzilla. This could help Microsoft to compete with Yahoo Shopping and Google Products. Well, let’s see what happens!

Yahoo! wants to get rid of Kelkoo…

The reason for this decision is that Yahoo! is not happy about the performance of Kelkoo, which they acquired three years ago for EUR 475 million According to the newspaper Le Monde, anyone offering more than EUR 500 million can call themselves the new owner of Kelkoo…

An intesting fact is that Microsoft just invested in Jellyfish (see my earlier post on them here), so in contrast to Yahoo! Microsoft does see big opportunities in the price comparison area. Probably that is also the area where Microsoft wants to generate extra money. In a meeting with advertising agencies Steve Balmer mentioned that within a few years 25% of revenues of Microsoft should be generated by advertising.