Ciao.com goes to Microsoft for $486 million !

After failing in the $47.5 billion bid to buy Yahoo earlier this year, Microsoft decided that it is time to look somewhere else and the next step would be the acquisition of Greenfield Online, the owner of popular European price comparison website ciao.com, for about $486 million.

The reason? Apparently they want some boost in Internet search and e-commerce business on the European market.

“We call it ‘instant answers. I hope it’s getting very clear that we’ve very serious about EMEA” (John Mangelaars, head of Microsoft’s consumer and online business in Europe).

The battle for “internet search” supremacy is not an easy one, Google has 62 percent of the global search market and 79 percent in Europe while Microsoft has a 2 percent market share in Europe and 9 percent worldwide, behind both Google and Yahoo. Microsoft is now hoping that it will distinguish itself by providing search results more useful to consumers, especially shoppers, than those thrown up by a Google search.

“Doing this shopping thing, I think, is a good move”. But “Nobody is able to compete right now with Google so there is nobody to buy to compete with Google,” (Herve le Jouan, ComScore’s managing director, Europe).

The deal is expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2008. Completion of the Greenfield sale to Microsoft does not depend on Microsoft’s disposal of the online survey business, the two companies said.

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