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Microsoft Buys Ciao.Com for a Better Search

Microsoft has agreed to buy Greenfield Online, owner of popular European price comparison website ciao.com, for about $486 million to boost its Internet search and e-commerce business in Europe.

Microsoft, whose $47.5 billion bid to buy Yahoo earlier this year failed after a long battle, said on Friday the acquisition -- the latest in a series -- should help it build a more consumer-friendly, results-oriented search engine.

"We call it 'instant answers'," said John Mangelaars, head of Microsoft's consumer and online business in Europe. "I hope it's getting very clear that we've very serious about EMEA," he added, speaking to Reuters by telephone.

Internet search is dominated by Google, which has 62 percent of the global search market and 79 percent in Europe, according to Web usage tracker ComScore.

Microsoft has a 2 percent market share in Europe and 9 percent worldwide, behind both Google and Yahoo. In Europe, Microsoft is also outranked by online auction site eBay and Russia's Yandex.

But Mangelaars said buying ciao.com was an important step in Microsoft's attempt to distinguish itself by providing search results more useful to consumers, particularly shoppers, than those thrown up by a Google search.

For example, results of a Microsoft search for a particular camera model could include which prices were available from which retailers, and maps of where those retailers were, rather than just links to the manufacturer's and retailers' websites.

The acquisition follows those of Norwegian enterprise search company Fast for about $1.2 billion early this year and shopping-and-auction site jellyfish.com for an undisclosed sum last year.

[Reuters]