Comparison Shopper Become.com Acquires German E-commerce Firm Pangora
Become.com, one of the few remaining indie comparison search and shopping engines, has acquired Pangora GmbH, a German e-commerce technology firm. Financial terms were not disclosed, though the companies expect the transaction to close by the end of the month. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Become.com has an office in London, but Pangora’s Karlsruhe offices will now serve as the base of all its European operations; Pangora’s management team, including GM Robin Schönbeck, will continue in their current roles.
Become.com says it will use Pangora’s technology to bolster its shopping platform in Europe, and Pangora will still be able to offer its e-commerce services to third-party e-tailers. Founded in 2004, Become.com emerged into a crowded field of comparison shopping sites. While rivals like Smarter.com and PriceGrabber.com found exits through acquisitions (by ValueClick and Experian, respectively), Become.com has stayed independent. It’s backed by over $37 million in funding from TPG Growth and other investors. Release.
Related Stories
Posted In: E-Commerce, Money, M&A & Venture Capital, Mergers & Acquisitions, Countries, Europe, Germany
Newsletter
Comments (1)
Oct 12, 2009 3:42 PM
An interesting move for become.com to buy a company that had to write down 17 million euros (26 million $) because of “significant losses of Google-dependent traffic”:
http://www.lycoseurope.com/eng/investors/reports/2007/LYC-GB07-E.pdf
The business model of creating vertical paid inclusion search engines (that get indexed by google) which get traffic for free and sell this traffic on a pay per click base to resellers is so 1998 - but today it is not a very convenient place to be between Google Product Search, Bing/Ciao, Amazon and other real Commerce Players like Manufacturers selling online directly or through partners.