“Great power involves great responsibility”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
Google is arguably the single biggest part of the Internet but things are beginning to happen at their Mountain View offices that have me concerned. Very concerned actually. You know that feeling when you start seeing a story evolve that you have already read and seen before? I have, so let me explain.
It may be seen that I am a bit old school with regards to Comparison Shopping Engines but Kelkoo and Shopping.com play a role in my thought processes. The fact that they have been around for a while and were once upon a time the market leaders in Comparison Shopping should not be underestimated. Over the last 18 months – 2 years both have fallen behind; both brands have gone through changes with regards to ownership in the last 5 years and have also seen some stagnation in terms of unique views and traffic.
I woke up this morning to the news that Steve Jobs has passed away. I opened Google Reader and instantly saw that the news has dominated the last 12 hours. As I read through the various articles it dawned on me just how big an influence Jobs had. I tried to think back to any other tech CEO that got such respect and outpouring of emotion and found none.
Let me start off by saying that this is a topic that is very close to my heart. I work in the ecommerce space and believe that the lines between offline and online commerce is steadily falling away. When eBay did their results presentation earlier in the year, the online and offline relationship got a fair amount of coverage.
I have been watching the moves that have been happening in Comparison Shopping Engine industry over the last 9 months. Google Product Search is making a lot of people and businesses squirm. In April Shopzilla was sold at a huge loss to private equity firm Symphony Technology Group LLC.
Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. says it is selling Shopzilla Inc., a comparison shopping site, for $165 million to private equity firm Symphony Technology Group LLC. That’s $360 million less than the $525 million Scripps paid for the site in 2005.