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The New Yahoo!, Google, MSN Et Al. Battleground
A reader writes: "Kelkoo sold to Yahoo for 575 million dollars!" That, in and of itself is not that interesting - but combine that with Google's inclusion of Froogle into the front page, and things become more interesting. The comparison shopping field, including places like PriceGrabber (Disclaimer: OSDN is an affiliate of PriceGrabber) in the US, Kelkoo/Yahoo! overseas, Froogle, and MSN is heating up in competition. Now that search has been monetized, the next battleground for big money is in comparison shopping, beyond MySimon and other smaller ones.
The upgrading of Froogle is only part of a much larger Google overhaul today. Other new features include a personalized search, and an email web alerts service. The latter seems to be a scaled-down copy of the well known Google Alert service. Can anyone find an overarching pattern to all these moves?
Froogle, however, is purely search engine. Just like the Google Web search, you'll be in their database if you happen to sell something, your site has a dollar tag on it next to the product, and you're not hiding your products behind some obscure interface that search engine has no access to.
Not Exactly True... I have done a couple of websites that use comparison engines, and they both use a feed to submit the product listings to froogle.
I think it's a good thing. It allows the stores to keep their listings up to date as far as pricing and such goes. (and probably more accurate than a spider can generate)
They can't say Joe's Kleenex on the box.
Sure they can, if the word "Kleenex" becomes so widespread that it is no longer a defensible trademark.
Don't believe me? Then you probably didn't know that "aspirin" and "cellophane", for example, were originally trademarks, not generic words. They were lost to common usage. It does happen, and companies will spend a fortune to try to stop it.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Don't believe me? Then you probably didn't know that "aspirin" and "cellophane", for example, were originally trademarks, not generic words. They were lost to common usage.
Actually you'll still see a Registered Trademark Symbol after Aspirin if you buy Bayer brand, but it's not actually meaningful now. Bayer AG had to give up their trademark to Aspirin as a term of the Treaty of Versailles after WWI.
Factoid for ya, another trademark Bayer lost that way: Heroin.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I'm not intimately involved with that part of the site, but OSDN uses Pricegrabber, not Pricewatch.
Searching for Linksys on Pricegrabber just gave me, well, a bunch of Linksys products. I do agree that searching for Linksys on Pricewatch gives you a bunch of clone products, though. Damn you and your trickery, Pricewatch!