eBay buys Israeli-founded startup
American online retail giant acquires Seattle-based price forecasting firm Decide.com. All 26 employees, excluding founder and CTO Prof. Oren Etzioni, will join eBay headquarters in Washington
Seattle-based Decide, whose CEO is Mike Fridgen, has developed tools providing consumers with extensive information on the prices of products on the market at the given time, allowing them to carry out the best purchase deal as far as they are concerned.
Following its sale, Decide will now focus on developing applications which will serve sellers in eBay's retail websites. These applications will help sellers price their items more competitively, decide whether an auction is the best sale format, or whether – based on past selling patterns – they should upgrade a product’s picture quality to receive a higher price.
“Decide’s technology framework and expertise at eBay will be used to help eBay sellers of all sizes better price their merchandise,” an eBay spokeswoman said.
The terms of the sale have yet to be disclosed, but Etzioni, who has been active in the field of search engines for many years now, is slated to be one of the main beneficiaries of the deal.
Etzioni is a computer science professor at the University of Washington. In 2008 he sold travel website Farecast, which he also founded, to Microsoft for $115 million. The website predicts and analyzes plane ticket prices.
According to the eBay report, all 26 Decide employees, excluding Etzioni, will join the American company's headquarters in Washington and the Decide.com website will shut down in late September.
