eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY) is expanding its activity in Israel by deepening its joint activity with Shopping.com and opening a development center. Shopping.com CEO Joshua Silverman says that the new center will develop eBay’s sorting and cataloguing technologies. He is visiting Israel for the annual meeting of Shopping.com’s websites worldwide.
Shopping.com was the world’s first price comparison website. It began as the Israeli start-up Dealtime. After barely surviving the Internet crisis, the company took off in 2004, changed its name, and went public on Nasdaq. eBay acquired the company for $634 million in 2005.
Shopping.com Israel is responsible for developing and strengthening the product catalogue that underpins the company’s operations worldwide. Shopping.com Israel is responsible for the products catalogues for the company’s websites in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia. The company currently has 214 million users worldwide.
Shopping.com is part of eBay’s Market Places division, which includes Rent.com and US sports tickets site StubHub.com. The division posted $1.29 billion revenue for the second quarter, 26% more than for the corresponding quarter of 2006.
Silverman says that time was needed to realize the synergy between Shopping.com and eBay. “We’ve now chosen the areas that can be leveraged, and we’re thinking about the integration. I’m proud that we’re doing things this way. We defined the core businesses where Shopping.com can contribute to eBay. Shopping.com is still the leading price comparison website, and we’re the world’s leading e-commerce site. We believe that we can increase the number of customers who find suitable products through better sorting and cataloguing. Excellence in sorting and cataloguing is an important part of our work and Israel will be the technology center in this field.”
Silverman says that eBay does not disclose the performance of its different units, but that Shopping.com does its work well. “It is part of the Market Places division. We maintain the profits of the strategic and entrepreneurial unit. That’s important to us. eBay has already said several times that Shopping.com is doing good work, and we’re very pleased by the acquisition.”
Silverman adds that the Israeli development center is hiring. He says that he is seeking two kinds of employees: engineers who love solving problems that other people believe are unsolvable, and global researchers who specialize in cataloguing. “We’re seeking e-commerce content experts, people who know how people behave. People who want to catalogue the world. It’s important for us not to outsource; we’re not sending problems to Israel to be solved. There’s a business problem that has to be fixed.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on October 8, 2007
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