reflect the encyclopedic tone used on wikipedia . see wikipedia s guide to writing better articles for suggestions . march 2008 learn how and when to remove this template message shopping.com industry internet fate acquired by ebay predecessor dealtime founded 1998 ; 18 years ago 1998 founder nahum sharfman and amir ashkenazi headquarters brisbane california usa products price comparison engine services price comparison services owner ebay number of employees 230 2012 parent ebay website www.shopping.com shopping.com is a price comparison service owned by ebay and operates websites in usa united kingdom france germany and australia . shopping.com started out with the name dealtime.com which still operates as a related but otherwise separate website . contents 1 history 2 see also 3 references 4 external links history edit shopping.com began as papricom dealtime.com 1 which was founded in israel in 1998 by dr. nahum sharfman and amir ashkenazi 2 the original business model was to create a downloadable client that would monitor changes in prices of products the user seeks to buy over time notifying the user when the product price reached a predetermined level hence the site s original name dealtime . originally targeting american consumers the basic concept was quickly modified from a downloadable client to a purely web based service a concept the company has kept ever since . after recruiting a management team of high ranking executives from other industries dealtime underwent rapid expansion in 2000 including formation of a major alliance with media giant bertelsmann adding british german spanish and japanese versions of its original american targeted website and acquiring digital jones a product advisory website . however during 2000 and 2001 it became apparent that the operation was losing a significant amount of money and that massive changes were needed . three rounds of layoffs done in 2001 and 2002 halved the workforce to some 150 ; the japanese and german websites were scrapped in late 2001 as well as plans for an early ipo and digital jones was shelved . also a growing percentage of the merchants being advertised on dealtime s website were forced to start paying for this service or become de listed ; some lucrative product categories became paying merchants only . in 2002 a new bidding system was introduced in which the highest bidding merchant got higher placement on the default price comparison results page consumers could always sort by price or rating . all these changes enabled the company to become profitable for the first time in 2003 . under the leadership of its ceo daniel t. ciporin in april 2003 dealtime acquired the california based consumer product review site epinions.com . in september 2003 the merged sites relaunched under the shopping.com brand and web address which it had purchased from alta vista . the new name as well as some offline tv advertisement and large online advertisement with partners such as google and other portals enabled shopping.com to become the 3rd most visited consumer website following ebay and amazon for several months during 2004 and continuously in the top 10 . although shopping.com remained an israeli corporation with r & d facilities in netanya israel it had a strong us presence with its corporate headquarters first in new york city 1998 2003 and later in brisbane california . 2 the company went finally public in october 2004 and was acquired by ebay in june 2005 for 21 per share in cash or total consideration of approximately 634 million . 3 it is currently a semi autonomous division within ebay and still runs the www.shopping.com website . ebay and shopping.com functionalities are slowly being merged for example ebay s paypal payment system in sdc s offering to its advertising merchants . shopping.com accepts cpc bidding . merchants must pay a minimum of 100 . since 2005 the company has added french australian and once again a german version of its website . in april 2009 61 year old nahum sharfman was killed along with his wife nava when their private plane crashed in greece . 4 see also edit amazon.com dealply ebay kelkoo usa website price comparison service silicon wadi references edit 1 a b http idea.sec.gov archives edgar data 1108482 000119312504177779 d424b1.htm ebay inc. ebay completes acquisition of shopping.com . investor.ebay.com . retrieved 2013 09 06 . famous dead db external links edit us shopping.com fr.shopping.com de.shopping.com uk.shopping.com au.shopping.com v t e companies owned by ebay ebay ebay enterprise half.com g market kijiji gumtree loquo magento marktplaats.nl microplace prostores shopping.com epinions stubhub tradera retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title shopping.com & oldid 717510161 categories ebaycomparison shopping websitescompanies formerly listed on nasdaqinternet properties established in 1998internet companies of israelonline companiessoftware companies of israelhidden categories wikipedia articles needing style editing from march 2008all articles needing style editing navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages deutschfran ais edit links this page was last modified on 28 april 2016 at 04 35 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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