Microsoft has agreed to acquire a Connecticut-based research company called Greenfield Online, which runs both a website called Ciao for European comparison shoppers and an online survey system that helps businesses conduct market research.
The cash tender offer to buy out all of Greenfield’s outstanding shares amounts to roughly $486 million, about $60 million more than investment firm Quadrangle recently offered to pay for Greenfield. Microsoft has already found an unnamed party to buy Greenfield’s surveys division from it, leaving the Redmond, WA-based company with the remaining Ciao subsidiary.
Ciao is a consumer-oriented website for (mainly European) shoppers who want to find reviews, ratings, and price comparisons for goods they can buy elsewhere online. To get an idea of the service, check out this listing for a Canon Powershot camera where you’ll see prices aggregated from several online retailers and reviews posted directly to Ciao itself. According to ComScore, Ciao receives over 26.4 million unique visitors per month from seven countries.
Microsoft’s decision to acquire Ciao is reminiscent of Yahoo’s decision to purchase Paris-based Kelkoo in 2004 for about $670 million – one that Yahoo has since reconsidered.
As with its purchase of discount shopping site Jellyfish last Fall, Microsoft plans to integrate Ciao into its Live Search offering, this time as a means to beef up its offering for European users.
Ciao was founded in Munich in 1999 and purchased by Greenfield Online in 2005.
I wonder whether Flash Widgets on Ciao’s website are going to be replaced with Silverlight.
MSoft can keep pumping money into Live Search, but until they focus on its core web search it will not be an effective competitor for Google.
Live Image Search is quite good, IMHO.
Alex
Ciao? Is it this one website which comes always in the first google results when I search for products, but instead get a page with 100 affiliate ad links?
Hmm… Why does Microsoft need something like that? I thought they don’t buy “content” pages?
So is Microsoft just giving up on the US market… and trying to corner the European site review niche?
Wow, 468$m!? MSFT choice Ciao instead Yahoo.
It’s interesting to see that Microsoft chose to poor so much money into Ciao; when their intent recently was the purchase of Yahoo. As many have stated here too – why are they beginning to focus on the European market? These questions are interesting to consider – as the shape of the top SEARCH competitors changes.
I’m still in the Google boat, and don’t see LIVE SEARCH beating the Big G anytime soon.
NOOOOO!
Never gonna buy anything from ciao anymore!
Doomed to fail, M$ is the reverse king midas in action.
Excellent analysis. Front page New York Times quality. Please fall off a bridge.
Actually, blog comment quality. Please take a deep breath.
Microsoft is back in the game! somewhat.
2 Points –
1) Did they get Euros for their dollars?? Then the price is half.
2) The name is great and I doubt Yahoo wants to do a complete overhaul of the look.
http://afewtips.com
on point #2 I meant to write DO WANT to do a complete overhaul.
Interesting purchase since MS already has a European shopping comparison engine with http://shopping.msn.co.uk/
Since the Ciao technology is relatively similar to the MSN Shopping technology, I guess that means they spent $486M for the visits.
Strange purchase.
Ciao and other price comparison sites are cash machines – they get millions of visitors through SEO and resell with affiliate marketing. So, it’s a no-brainer for any company active in online advertising/affiliate marketing to buy this type of business model. Soon MSFT will replace Google AdSense and affiliate links with its own advertising solutions. The question is not why they acquired Ciao and its 26 million visitors, but how much they paid. Keep in mind that $486m is for the total Ciao+Greenfield. So, until we know for how much they resell Greenfield Surveys, there is no way to know the value of Ciao alone…
Bulls eye!!!
Typical stupid Microsoft. They can’t build anything worthwhile, so they have to try to buy their way out of their mediocrity. I just wish Microsoft would close their doors and return all the money to the shareholders. The world would be such a better place. I feel sorry for all of the losers stupid enough to use their products.
1) Finally they’re paying attention to Europe- it’s very easy not to care once you have something (anybody remember when they couldn’t get Broadband due to geographical constraints, hard to care about the areas still without it once you’ve got it though!). Europe is obviously a very large region with a population to match and many use Google due to lack of other companies offering up the same services and getting and publicity- “Google” being a verb doesn’t help but the tides could change, it just seems nobody has tried properly yet!
2) I would lean towards disagreeing with those who say that it’s only core search that will topple Google- if MS can build a good enough cashback like system for the UK I can see it really getting a lot of traffic- sometimes it’s not search numbers but revenue that counts and this could be a good move, I would only hope that in order to get more traffic they pursue more partners in Europe than they seem to have for America- the more partners the more chance of success I would imagine. With our high prices for many items and the recession taking place in the UK it’s worth MS’s dime to offer up something that gives back money to the consumer… the timing could be perfect… with some advertising.
@ Jason S: You really don’t seem to be able to put forth a worthwhile comment or anything constructive so why bother? You’re just dressing yourself up as another opinionated with little in the way of original thought to offer value to discussions and will only garner support from others who share your narrow-minded views. So here’s a thought! Present a well thought out comment, or at least something that’s original and then maybe you’ll gain some respect and your time spent here will be well spent.
..and that is what ’sunk-cost’ is kids…
Micro not so soft is forever buying something…lol
http://www.mysp...atedndetermined
I am a bit sceptical about Microsoft spreading its wings into what was a reasonably independent publication, will there be more favorable reviews towards software published by Microsoft and its associates pushing out the smaller publishing houses? I am a Vista user and happy with the OS but I look towards independent publishers for their advice and the readers opinions before purchasing items. I feel that open source software (free) will not in the future feature as prominently as it does now, as MS will want to make a bigger hit with its profit.