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October 2, 2007

Microsoft Acquires Discount Shopping Site Jellyfish.com

Duncan Riley

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Microsoft has acquired Madison, Wisconsin based discount shopping service Jellyfish.com. The price of the acquisition was not disclosed, but the deal was sealed Thursday.

Under the terms of the deal, Jellyfish.com will maintain its standalone identity and its 26 employees will remain in Wisconsin.

Jellyfish.com previously took $5 million in funding from Kegonsa Capital Partners and Clyde Street in October 2006.

Jellyfish.com’s platform, which Marshall Kirkpatrick described when he reviewed in for TechCrunch as being “a little bit frightening and bizarre,” is a reverse auction where buyers bid on reducing prices, betting on when to place an order without knowing quantity at the given price.

The Microsoft Live Search team said they “think the technology has some interesting potential applications as we continue to invest heavily in shopping and commerce as a key component of Live Search.”

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 1:14 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Alex Bromberg

    October 2nd, 2007 at 1:55 am

    Thank you for information.

  2. Json

    October 2nd, 2007 at 1:59 am

    Quite the Googly purchase.

  3. Pranav

    October 2nd, 2007 at 2:07 am

    Thanks for the info.

  4. Clement

    October 2nd, 2007 at 3:01 am

    I did not even know about Jellyfishbefore. I just hope that such purchases will keep them away from facebook.

  5. associatedcontent.com/article/399634/affiliate_program_the_secret_magic.html, (On, Microsoft acquires jellyfish.com)

    October 2nd, 2007 at 4:12 am

    It seems that they have been bitten by an acquisition bug again.

    I remember a few yrs ago when they bought WebTV. It became a craze for a couple of years and then fizzled because I don’t hear about them anymore.

    I guess while they are salivating and eying Facebook.com, it won’t hurt for them to gobble up a jellyfish as an appetizer.

  6. lawrence

    October 2nd, 2007 at 5:17 am

    some of the things getting acquired surprise me, most do - this one included.
    but good for jellyfish.com and their acquisition success.
    the domain name alone is worth at least easily 100K

  7. Sunray

    October 2nd, 2007 at 5:26 am

    All I can say is that I’m a proud member of the Jellyfish community and will definitely continue to support them. Online shopping with Jellyfish is fun and exciting! Friendly community and amazing staff. I saved more money shopping with Jellyfish than any other site because of their prizes and cash back incentives.

  8. sc

    October 2nd, 2007 at 6:36 am

    This type of auction is a dutch auction, first used to sell Dutch tulips.

  9. motherduce

    October 2nd, 2007 at 7:28 am

    And now JF is down. Sad day that they’ve been bought by MS. Hopefully it will still be fun for a few more months.

  10. Shoaib

    October 2nd, 2007 at 8:47 am

    Congrats to them. I still have an $80 credit in my jellyfish account…

  11. phenom

    October 2nd, 2007 at 9:31 am

    And the monopoly kings do it again
    http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

  12. Steve Ballmer

    October 2nd, 2007 at 9:41 am

    “a little bit frightening and bizarre,” ….
    that’s why I bought it!
    Living on the edge baBY!

  13. mathew

    October 2nd, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    *deletes jellyfish.com account*

    *notes that atdmt.com is making TechCrunch page hang during load, adds atdmt.com to adblock*

  14. Jeff Molander

    October 3rd, 2007 at 9:08 am

    I’m reading a lot of comments such as “It’s not a game changer” (coming from analysts). This conclusion relies on things not changing much in terms of how the Web gets monetized. Even Google understands what’s coming next — a slow-down in pay-per-click ad model spending.

    Proof’s in the puddin: Look no further than Google’s:

    1) Launching a cost-per-action (”pay-per-action”) ad model

    2) Launching a tool allowing advertisers to manage (automate placement of) pay-per-click ads against a pre-defined cost-per-action

    Google understands the game is about to change and is moving. Is anyone paying attention? MSFT is and they’re locking up intellectual property in this move — one that combines multiple, successful and innovative digital shopping models.

    Jellyfish takes a best of breed approach and “mashes them up” to the amusement of consumers: Ebates + Woot.com and on the advertiser-side, eBay’s Shopping.com + Google’s AdWords auction environment + Commission Junction’s (VCLK) performance-based cost model (cost-per-action) with a twist of Google (auctioning off ads).

    It all ads up to valuable IP that Google, in theory, cannot access. Right?

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