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Deja.com sells "core technology" to eBay
Tuesday, December 12 2000
by Paul Drury


Deja.com, the pioneer comparison shopping site, has sold its core technology to
on-line auctioneer eBay and also plans to sell the rest of the company.

The price paid by eBay has not been disclosed. Earlier this year, Deja.com
cancelled its scheduled stock market flotation and laid off staff after the
bottom fell out of the technology market.



In June, it raised USD12.5 million in private financing from, among others,
Austin Ventures, Chase H&Q, Comcast, GE Capital, Internet Capital Group, Prime
New Media Ventures and ZDNet. Deja.com has offices in New York and Austin, Texas.




An eBay subsidiary, Half.com, will hire the bulk of Deja.com's technical
development team to help expand its fixed price on-line marketplace for books,
videos and other items into new product categories.



Deja.com's technology allows consumers to access product reviews and current
product prices, as well as post their own ratings for products. The company also
operates Deja Business Solutions, a licensing unit for its content and
proprietary technologies.



Its other product is a popular Internet discussion group service, the
user-friendly Usenet Discussion Service (http://www.deja.com/usenet/), which
provides access to approximately 35,000 Usenet newsgroups. 



"We made the decision earlier this year that both of our products made better
sense as part of a broader service," Richard Gorelick, chief strategy officer of
Deja.com, told the Wall Street Journal. "In this market, it didn't make sense
to try to develop Deja as a large destination brand." Gorelick told the paper
that the remainder of the company is also likely to be sold.



Deja.com was founded as Deja News in 1995 by Steve Madere to provide a
user-friendly interface to Usenet, the original Internet discussion network. In
May 1999, the company re-branded itself as Deja.com and extended its franchise in
consumer-generated content by introducing Deja Ratings.



Deja Ratings formalised the exchange of product information already taking place
in Usenet on a daily basis. Since its launch, consumers have contributed
approximately one million product ratings -- an unparalleled critical mass of
consumer-generated ratings and reviews. 



Deja.com launched its precision buying service in February 2000. The service
combines Deja.com's existing contextual discussion features, and consumer ratings
and reviews with product specifications, product comparison tools, professional
reviews and product pricing and availability information.