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Businesses IT

Pricegrabber Purchased for $485M 102

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the what-a-steal dept.
w98 writes "GUS PLC, the parent company of Experian Interactive, recently announced the acquisition of PriceGrabber.com for $485M plus expenses. Don Robert, Chief Executive Officer of Experian, commented: 'As a trusted and preferred comparison shopping destination, PriceGrabber.com has a leading position in a fast-growing market. When combined with the complementary skills, expertise and scale of Experian, in both Interactive and Marketing, we are very excited about the future growth prospects for PriceGrabber.com.'"
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Pricegrabber Purchased for $485M More

Pricegrabber Purchased for $485M

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  • Translation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ixne ( 599904 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:04PM (#14259041)
    "we're very excited about pumping paying stores' ads right to the top of search results, with no regard to actual accuracy or trustworthiness of the vendors, while simultaneously trying to give the impression of validity."

    • Re:Translation (Score:3, Interesting)

      by brontus3927 ( 865730 )
      Sadly, that's probably what will happen. Does pricegrabber currently have any policy regarding the accuracy of the reviews and any losses incurred from buying based on an inccorrect review? If not the parent co could be open to lawsuit if they persue revenue over reliability.

      • Re:Translation (Score:3, Informative)

        by el americano ( 799629 )
        As with libel, it is the reviewer who assumes this resposibility. Pricegrabber takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content posted by you or any third party.

        If they start deleting negative reviews, then they might need to say, "Do not rely on reviews as your sole source of information when making purchasing decisions." That's it! Quietly, but efficiently delete reviews... and profit!

        That being said, it's a good site for now. Just be sure to check Amazon or pricewatch afterward, when appr
    • "And while we're at it, we're pepetuating the myth that NOTHING trumps price when buying a product. Screw customer service, reputation, shipping time, return policies, reliability, selection, etc., it's ALL ABOUT THE MONEY."

      And to be quite honest, Slashdot has more price whores reading and posting than I've ever seen in one place. It's all a race to the absolute bottom, isn't it?

      Our business doesn't bother with Amazon, Pricegrabber, and all of the others because they do -zero- for brand recognition,

      • Re:Better Translation (Score:4, Funny)

        by oldwolf13 ( 321189 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @05:35PM (#14259827) Journal
        >> ... because of a $0.25 price difference ...
        >> ... once they realize that saving that nickel isn't worth ...

        uhm that's a quarter.

        Hope you're not the accountant :)

      • Re:Better Translation (Score:2, Insightful)

        by mjensen ( 118105 )
        As a former purchaser (and IT person) for a company, I can say that when given the choice, businesses will choose the cheaper solution.
        "Spend the bare minimum to get it done" was the constant mantra from management.
      • I can think of a couple of UK companies that come up good on price comparison. One company that deals by email only, meaning that what might have taken 10 minutes to discuss a return issue can take a few days.

        My rule of thumb now is to deal with small suppliers that have served me well. Suppliers who when I email a technical pre-sales question, give me a comprehensive answer, not a hyperlink to a FAQ page on the manufacturer's website. Suppliers for whom a 5 minute waiting time for a call almost never hap

      • I believe those site show an "average experience" from previous users, where they can vote so you know if it's a good, not so good, or bad shop. You can also read what they said about it, so if they experienced long delivery time, or anything bad, you can chose another one..

        I don't really mind the price difference, and I mostly buy from canadian stores, even if the prices after currency exchange & duties would be lower than the one I have to pay, since there's no hassle for me and it's easier to rely on
    • Thankfully there's still http://nextag.com/ [nextag.com].

      I've always went to nextag, though that may be because they advertised with Google.
  • Is there really something better and more important to write about than pricewatch? [pricewatch.com] Speaking of which, how the hell do they make money?
    • Although I use Pricewatch all the time, I am not sure why it does not have the popularity that pricegrabber got. Perhaps it is the annoying ads that pricegrabber gives. People need to think they are on a flash exciting page. Besides up till a few years ago, pricewatch was lacking in the eyecandy realm. It was pretty ugly.

      • Re:what about pricewatch (Score:5, Interesting)

        by thebdj ( 768618 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:26PM (#14259268) Journal
        Pricewatch started out specializing in computer equipment and did a poor job of picking up the consumer side, something that pricegrabber has done fairly well. The interface over at pricewatch also does not lend much to the credence of the site. While it is a bad policy, many regular internet users judge the "site by its cover" and pricegrabber just looks "prettier" then pricewatch.

        There are also the sorting functionality with PG over PW. Some of the breakdowns on PW leave a lot to be desired and can make finding items really hard. Not to mention a few sites have figured out how to regularly screw up the PW listing for their items. I am not sure how long they have had the rating system for at PW for stores; however, I do not remember it always being there and that is something else your normal consumer is going to want.

        Basically, I really avoid both sites all together anymore. More times then not Newegg or ZZF (ZipZoomFly) have the cheapest prices or close enough to it that I am not going to start ordering my computer parts from every little corner of the web. With most consumer items, I usually research stuff through other online sites and then wind up purchasing from a place I regularly shop at so if and when I have to call CS, it looks better then the schmuck who orders once from a site and never again.

        I also think that many of these sites begin to lose some of their early patrons for the reason I no longer use them much. People begin to notice the same three or four stores constantly having the lowest prices and they just proceed to go to those stores and cut out the middle man. Along the same vein, people order things a few times from the store they once never heard of and before you know it they trust the store (especially if they have never had a problem) so they continue to go back there instead of using PW or PG.

        In the end I basically search a few sites each time I am going to order something. If it is books or DVDs, I will check Amazon, DeepDiscountDVD, Buy.com, Wal-Mart, Costco (because I have a card), and Overstock. Computer stuff is pretty much Newegg and ZZF, but sometimes I will take a trip to Microcenter if I want something now.
        • Ever since NewEgg built a warehouse in my state and I have to pay sales tax or submit my ST-4 (which NewEgg really doesn't have any good mechenism to do so) for resale purchases, I've started using eWiz.com Their selection isn't as wide as NewEgg and they tend to push SuperTalent products, but every side by side comparison I've done, eWiz had a lower price. Very professionally packaged with lots of packing in the needed places, and for "cheap" memory, SuperTalent seems quite solid, and each stick has a he
          • I don't know why so many people like New Egg? Must people really buy everything from the same source?

            I find myself picking out the very best parts for my computer from a wide variety of online stores with Pricewatch as the central hub. Yes I have bought from eWiz too, but rarely do I buy more than 3 items from the same place. No single store sells the best of everything.

            • I don't know why so many people like New Egg? Must people really buy everything from the same source?

              I find myself picking out the very best parts for my computer from a wide variety of online stores with Pricewatch as the central hub.

              You probably end up losing to extra shipping charges more than you're saving by ordering every component from a different source.

              Most of the Pricewatch bottom-feeders also insist on shipping only to your billing address, which is a pain in the ass when you have a job t

        • If your normal consumer wants reviews, then Newegg is a terrible example of a site to use. Some of the things that can cause them to remove reviews:

          The price you paid
          Replies to existing customer reviews. (No corrections please)
          Comparisons to competing (i.e. better) products
          References to aftermarket procedures/mods
          Criticism of Newegg.com's service
          Comments on a product that was broken on delivery (also, see preceeding restriction)

          So their reviews suck. Stick to reputable independent forums, or even Amazon. Ne
          • So what places *do* have good dead pixel policies, for reference?
            • TigerDirect has a zero-tolerance policy on dead pixels, but pretty much anyone who won't charge you shipping AND %15 restocking for a defective screen. (You may want to check with your reputable online dealer first.) Naturally, most brick and mortar stores have a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

              To further elaborate, Newegg doesn't count stuck pixels as dead pixels, so your screen could be seriously messed up beyond 8 dead pixels. (Otherwise, NE is all right.)

              I hope I was able improve your holiday shopping exp
              • There are methods that are somewhat effective at fixing stuck pixels. The method is similar to removing image persistence in an LCD by running a series of colors across the spectrum to clear the problem. Some people have wrongly stated the need to use "bright" colors. The idea is actually to use a series of colors that effectively use all the sub-pixels to a varying degree so as to "exercise" the sub-pixels. I had to do something like this with a screensaver on my Dell Laptop to remove a persistant imag
          • I would suggest not buying a monitor if you haven't physically inspected the actual monitor you're purchasing. I bought an LCD from Newegg, and while it is OK, it's not that great (it was a good price, though). And mine has only one dead pixel.
            • At my last job I used two Dell 1905FP displays, and at my current job I use two more of the exact same display. When I can find one of these monitors for less than $300 (it happens every once in a while) I'm going to buy it, even if I can't see it beforehand. Of the four Dell 1905FPs I've used (and countless others that belong to coworkers), I have never seen a stuck or dead pixel!

              I don't know of Dell's policy regarding dead pixels if I was to encounter one.

        • A fair assessment on all sides.

          The pricewatch addition was fairly recent, within the last few years really. A stronger merchant rating system would be nice, but that is fairly difficult when you can't really verify who bought and who didn't.

          I used to shop with ZZZ, but often newegg was beating most of all their prices. (even with the increased shipping cost over newegg)

          That said, I primarily shop with newegg now. Despite the claims of filtering reviews it would seem they really do not censor that badly. In
      • Although I use Pricewatch all the time, I am not sure why it does not have the popularity that pricegrabber got.

        It's because Pricewatch sucks. Their menu sucks, their search sucks, their display sucks, their categorization sucks, and their filtering sucks.

        Have you ever tried Pricegrabber [pricegrabber.com]? It has a very intuitive interface and search as well as a good layout for finding either an exact product, or browsing a category trying to decide what you want.

        Let's compare a search, something common and easy like 'WRT54

    • Re:what about pricewatch (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fishybell ( 516991 ) <fishybell@h[ ]ail.com ['otm' in gap]> on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:26PM (#14259267) Homepage Journal
      Although not flashy and exciting, everything you see on Pricewatch is an advertisement. To get your company's wares listed on Pricewatch you need to sign up [pricewatch.com] (link found at bottom under the news listings).

      This is how Pricewatch differentiates itself from Froogle. Froogle gets its ads from everyone and everywhere, with little or no restrictions on who lists what. Pricewatch has a pretty stringent set of rules:

      (from the link)

      • be at least 1 year in business
      • accept phone orders
      • offer phone tech support
      • have established website with prices posted
      • accept major credit cards
      • No Auction firms or related business models such as "pooling". Fixed retail pricing please
      • No Dealers that charge membership fees please

      We've heard about Pricewatch et al trying to stop unscupulous camera dealers, but what has Froogle done? Nothing. That's because it really has no defined way to block out the baddies.

      I started using Pricewatch several years ago. I enjoyed a short stint with Froogle because of its better search capabilities, but I'm back to be a Pricewatch junkie for life. Long live Pricewatch!

      • Isn't that what Reseller Ratings is for? To judge whether or not a vendor is legit?

        I do think Froogle is useful for some things, and has some better search capabilities than PriceWatch. I personally use both.

    • Pricewatch makes it money from the advertisers (the stores).

      But I rarely use Pricewatch now because I don't know if I can 'trust' the stores listed on it.
    • Actually, I think the problem is worse than placement by ad dollars paid. All the these sites, including pricegrabber give you incorrect information because the stores play games with what they post as their shipping versus handling costs. Recently I went to pricegrabber and found the lowest price based on price and shipping only to find that the store added a hefty handling fee not advertise on pricegrabber. Fortunately, I noticed the discrepancy and pulled my order before it was too late. I liken this kin

  • Idiots (Score:5, Funny)

    by jvance ( 416133 ) <slashdot.t.jvance@spamgourmet.com> on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:06PM (#14259057)
    They could have bought it for 20% less if they'd shopped around.
  • I see this too often - some obscure or mediocre website selling for a fortune, and then I realize that I need to start spending more time on my own project - LOL...

  • $485M?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by coronaride ( 222264 ) <coronaride@@@yahoo...com> on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:07PM (#14259066)
    they should've froogled it, first...
  • $485 mil at once, $49 mil over 10 weeks or $5 mil over 100 weeks?

  • First Prime Factorization Post (Score:3, Funny)

    by 2*2*3*75011 ( 900132 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:09PM (#14259094)
    $485M = $2*2*2*2*2*2*5*5*5*5*5*5*5*97

    PriceGrabber.com has a leading position in highly factorizable prices.
  • Oh yay! Another corporate monolith! Too bad they spent $485mm on something that is sure to be made obselete by google within two years. Yeah, that was a smart move.

  • Not a bad move for them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bullfish ( 858648 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:15PM (#14259164)
    While we who eat and breathe web stuff are not as likely to be taken in by the tactics pricegrabber and their ilk use to pump their paying customers and favourites products, this is apt to help them in terms of dealing with not so savvy folk cruising the net for their shopping. It's been shown that many people can't tell the difference between "real" reviews of products and bogus articles that are really nothing more than the web equivalent of infomercials. The reality is now the web is crowded with many people who have no concept of what they are doing out there and who literally believe much of what is written. This plays perfectly to that crowd. There's a reason spam goes on, and that is there is an awful lot of people out there who really seem to believe you can get a new Honda for forwarding e-mail. You go figure it out.

  • Comparison Shopping Sites (Score:3, Interesting)

    by x0dus ( 163280 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:18PM (#14259194)
    Personally I find the general purpose comparison shopping sites like Pricegrabber and Froogle very poor at getting relevant results for most products. They are usually not able to differentiate different products and either group unrelated products together or don't group related products together. Luckily there are lots of sites where you can comparison shop for very specific products, like Compare Cartridges [comparecartridges.com] for printer ink cartridges, AddAll [addall.com] for books, DVD Price Search [dvdpricesearch.com] for movie, Cheap-Subscription [cheap-subscription.com] for magazines, etc.

  • Experian? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Yurka ( 468420 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:20PM (#14259215) Homepage
    Talk about synergy! "Please wait for the custom price individually selected just for you, while we run up a quick check of your credit history..."

  • Never heard of them! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by grqb ( 410789 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:25PM (#14259264) Homepage Journal
    Maybe it's just me but I've never been to PriceGrabber.com before...never even heard of them. And it's not like I'm a recluse on the net either. I'm sure 90% of the people I know haven't heard of PriceGrabber.com before.
    • i was thinking the same thing about Experian
      • Well, if it's the same Experian that I'm thinking of -- while you may not know who they are, they know who you are. Bwahahahaha!

        Seriously, though -- if they are, they're one of the big three credit reporting agencies...as joked about above...

  • Wow. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by parasonic ( 699907 )
    Forget holding up the world for $100M ransom. I think that I'd take the frickin' website!

  • Do folks actually use these sites? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rAiNsT0rm ( 877553 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:30PM (#14259289) Homepage
    Obviously they are if there is $400+ million dollars in interest by the purchaser... but I know that these sites poll only a select few online stores and the prices are rarely all that great.

    Occasionally I will check out what pricegrabber or mysimon has to say, but most likely it will point me to Amazon.com and a moderate price as my best bet. These types of sites really just seem like the *worst* possible place to compare prices due to their discretion of the included stores, this system just seems to ooze opportunities for corruption. Constantly pit two big sites against sites they know have higher prices and collect a nice kickback from the big sites.

    A trustworthy and all-inclusive (or at least as close as possible) price comparison site would be very welcomed though. Maybe this will be it... heh, who am I kidding, if they are shelling out $485 mil they plan on raping folks for everything they got in any way they can.
    • I use pricegrabber all the time. Over the last 5 years or so I've found them better than froogle (which is awful to navigate and doesn't aggregate items well), mysimon (which usually leads only to big name websites) and the other no-name price comparison sights out there. It seems able to aggregate items better than the competitors and the pricing based on zip-code is a huge bonus.

      I don't work for them or have any other interest in their success.
    • I actually use this quite a bit and have saved quite a bit over retail. I used to use Pricewatch but like the ability of this site to calculate the bottom line price in most cases as well as a decent comparison. Of course, you have to take the selection of stores and reviews with a grain of salt

      The bottom line for me: I have saved money using this free service.

    • who am I kidding, if they are shelling out $485 mil they plan on raping folks for everything they got in any way they can.

      It's free. It has substantial (and probably overwhelming in the long term, Google-wise) competition. Companies can choose to have their items not listed there, and can pay money to sweeten things. Visitors can simply go away. How is this rape? Why does any merger/acquisition instantly turn into something Eeeeevil from the slashdot group-think perspective? I'm genuinely curious. This i
      • Well it is "free" to use but not totally. To believe any company would pay $485 million dollars to GIVE AWAY anything for free is just silly. There is profit to be had, and that profit comes from the sellers. Now if the business model is based solely on income from the sites queried then that means the site is not centered around getting YOU the best deal, but getting the most money from the listed seller sites. So this means that they are going to posture those higher paying sites to seem like they have th
        • No, in this case, the retailers with things to sell ARE the consumers. They are consuming the service that PG is offering, just like they consume print ads in local papers, TV ads, and the services of their employees.

          To the extent that a retailer can't succeed in the long term without, themselves, dealing honestly with their customers, they won't do a lot of business with a service that somehow pollutes that environment. There will always be exceptions - just like there are now with Google ads, or print
  • Enter your ZIP CODE to see the final cost Pricegrabber from top rated online merchants.

  • No results for linux PCs (Score:3, Funny)

    by patcito ( 932676 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:34PM (#14259329)
    the "PC - Linux" section doesn't return any result, search for "linux PC" on google and you'll get plenty of results. How accurate...

  • $485 million is too expensive (Score:3, Funny)

    by this great guy ( 922511 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:35PM (#14259335)

    considering I am selling a mirror of PriceGrabber.com for ONLY $300 million ! Anyone interested ?

  • wowzer (Score:2, Informative)

    by mulcher ( 241014 )
    shopzilla sold in June for a little more than that.. expect major consolidation in this area...

  • These are the guys who love PriceRitePhoto? (Score:3, Informative)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @04:58PM (#14259539) Homepage
    IIRC, PriceGrabber was all about showing PriceRitePhoto -- the Brooklyn scamsters who would refund money stolen from customers only if they posted a good review -- as one of the better, trustworthy, lowest-price photo shops around.

    Yup.

    I'm gonna trust PriceGrabber. Fersure.
  • Back in the day, like '00, I used to use Pricewatch to cruise for cheap parts once I'd decided what I wanted to buy. They seemed honest then, though I haven't used the service in years as the local Fry's is only 10 minutes away and convenience will trump a $5 savings any day.

    I'm wondering if there are any reputable review/comparison sites out there any more? I know that every single site I've seen that's just an accumulation of 'user' submitted reviews is total BS. But maybe there's room for some honesty su
  • Experian is one of those companies you know will do everything to screw over the consumer while making big money on their side. This is evidenced in how difficult it is to talk to a person when you call them to report fraud on your credit report.

    Either Experian is going to run the site into the ground (because google and pricewatch will still be better), or Experian will figure out some way of making money off of it while screwing the consumer at the same time all while the consumer is looking the other
    • Yeah I was going to post something about how much I hate Experian. They are the worst of the three credit agencies. I had 6 credit cards a couple months back, I closed 2 of them because I thought I had too many, not knowing that this can lower your credit score (closing accounts). One of my other credit cards, Bank One, was recently bought out by chase, another unethical corporation, and I already had a chase continental airlines card. They sent me a new terms of service around august for both cards, I didn
      • If you have 6 credit cards, all with $1000 limits, and you have three cards with $500 balances, then you're using $1500 worth of $6000 total access to credit money, for a 25% ratio of debt to total credit availability. Say you close two accounts that are totally paid off, you still have $1500 debt on now $4000 worth of credit money, which is a 37.5% ratio. The higher that ratio goes, the lower your credit score goes. And if you have more than 50% of your credit limit used up on any one account, that can dro
  • They should have gone to priceline.com and named their own price. I bet they'd have been able to get a far better deal - and perhaps got to meet William Shatner!
  • With all the concern over fake/unjust ratings and reviews, I wonder if Google might release a contextual review/rating averaging engine.

    By contextually searching blogs, review sites and news reports, one could have the most aggressive aggregate information available.

    Combined with AdSense, it's incredible power.
  • To me, a name like PriceGrabber implies a focus on the needs of the shopper (saving money), rather than on their true goal of the needs of the seller (maximizing expenditures).

    "WalletGrabber" would probably spook the herd, though.

    Eventually we'll just be traded as consumers futures on the CME.


    "10,000 auto buyers with >750 credit rating for January delivery"
  • Any idea if this new parent company is going to try and fix any of the glaring issues with disreputable vendors that have been discussed here in recent weeks?
  • I sense an "Ongoing bullshit senario" here. Years on the farm has taught me that anything with this much synergy in it just has to be agricultural grade fertiliser.
  • They'll just use my credit report to filter search results for things I can actually afford!
  • Anyone want to bet how long it takes PriceGrabber personnel to take the loot and run for the hills?

    Sheesh, it's like the 90s all over again.
  • I've been going to these sites to shop for stuff like digital cameras, laptops and the like. As has been pointed out in other posts, they are all looking similar in the results: PriceGrabber, Shopping.com/Epinions, Nextag, MySimon. There are a few differences.

    For me, they give me a range of acceptable prices. Then I go to the retailers I trust, your Amazons, J&Rs, Tar-jays, etc. Someone is usually hitting a good price.

    Some of those obscure companies with the ultra low prices are slime. When shopping

  • They should have used priceline.com to get up to 50% off the purchase price! priceline.com! -- Yes, I did create this account just for this joke.
  • Now that would be a win, if Dun and Bradstreet's corporate information fed into Google's rankings.
  • Does this mean that I will only be entitled to one free PriceGrabber.com search per year now? Of course, I would imagine for a low $24.95 per month, I might be entitled to as many searches as I want, so long as my account remains paid. Or for $5.00 more, maybe I can even get the "Total Review" number, to see how many people have left positive or negative feedback of the various suppliers.
  • There are many comparison shopping sites that do automatic price detection, all of them (including PG itself) developed and marketed for a fraction of the $0.5B acquisition cost. Personally, I prefer the little-known Dulance, http://dulance.com/ [dulance.com].

    A good test for Pricegrabber vs. Dulance that I have done this morning (an attempt to buy a miniPCI WLAN card):
    atheros cm9

    On PG, no results (but an ad from Neweb that really sells the thing - seems that whoever sells ads on PG does better matching than PG

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