Shopping.com
Overview
Shopping.com helped consumers compare products and offers across merchants before proceeding to merchant websites. eBayeBayeBay Inc. is an online marketplace company headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar; it started out with person-to-person online auctions and listed on Nasdaq in 1998. As of the end of 2025, it had 135 million active buyers, and its platform’s gross merchandise volume in 2025 was nearly $80 billion.Open the full entry’s 2005 acquisition announcement treated its product catalog and the Epinions review community as complementary assets.[1]
Contents17 sections
Key facts
March 1997Incorporated in Israel
The prospectus dates incorporation in Israel to March 1997, while Ashkenazi’s biography dates his co-founding role to December. Legal incorporation and the account of the founding team therefore use different dates.[2]
December 1997Founders Establish the Business
Contemporary Globes reporting dates Nahum Sharfman and Amir Ashkenazi’s formation of PapriCom to December 1997. Its DealTime.com service let users specify products and acceptable prices, then notified them of matching offers from online stores, auctions and classifieds.[3]
1998DealTime Receives an Innovation Award
March 12, 2003Announces Agreement to Acquire Epinions
DealTime announced a definitive agreement to acquire consumer-review site Epinions and combine shopping search with user reviews. Shareholder approval and other conditions remained outstanding; Epinions co-founder and CEO Nirav Tolia was to become chief operating officer.[4]
April 2003Completes the Epinions Acquisition
The annual report confirms completion in April. Epinions preferred shareholders received preferred stock, some retained employees received options, and common shares were canceled without payment. This treatment later became central to litigation.[5]
October 2003Changes Its Corporate Name
DealTime Ltd. changed its name to Shopping.com Ltd., bringing comparison shopping and Epinions consumer reviews within the same business.[5]
October 2004Lists on Nasdaq
Shopping.com listed as SHOP at $18 per share. The prospectus offered 6,871,160 shares, including 5,060,084 newly issued shares; the remainder were sold by existing shareholders, whose proceeds did not go to the company.[2]
January 19, 2005Former Epinions Shareholders Sue
Former shareholders including Naval RavikantNaval RavikantNaval Ravikant is an entrepreneur and angel investor and a co-founder of AngelList. Early on he co-founded the review site Epinions; he and Babak Nivi later grew AngelList out of the startup-fundraising blog Venture Hacks, and he co-founded the cryptocurrency hedge fund MetaStable Capital and Spearhead, which backs founders to make angel investments. His views on startups and life were compiled into the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.Open the full entry sued over disclosures surrounding the 2003 transaction. Shopping.com’s annual report identified the company as a defendant and rejected the allegations as meritless; the claims were not judicial findings.[6][5]
June 1, 2005eBay Agrees to Acquire Shopping.com
eBay agreed to buy all outstanding shares for $21 each in cash, estimating consideration at approximately $620 million from the May 31 share count. Regulatory and shareholder approvals remained required; this was an agreement, not a completed acquisition.[1]
August 30, 2005eBay Completes the Acquisition
Shopping.com’s Form 8-K confirms completion of the eBay acquisition. Voluntary Nasdaq delisting took effect at the August 29 close, and the company filed to terminate registration of its ordinary shares.[7]
December 2005Epinions Dispute Is Settled
April 2013Advertising Business Adopts eBay Commerce Network Brand
eBay explained that the advertising business had evolved from a single comparison site into a merchant-to-publisher network and adopted the eBay Commerce Network brand. Shopping.com, DealTime.com and Epinions.com continued as publisher sites within that network at the time.[10]
May 1, 2019eBay Commerce Network Closes
eBay Commerce Network closed on this date.[11]
Revenue Model and Entity Distinctions
At the IPO, consumers used Shopping.com free of charge, while merchants and listing providers paid referral fees for click-through traffic. The Israeli listed parent, its US subsidiaries and the website brand represented different legal and commercial concepts.[2]
Related Organizations, Websites, and Public Accounts
Shopping.com: Official website: https://www.shopping.com/ (opens in a new window).[12]
eBay: Official website: https://www.ebayinc.com/ (opens in a new window).[10]
Sources
- eBay to Acquire Shopping.com (opens in a new window)
- Shopping.com — IPO Prospectus (opens in a new window)
- PapriCom Technologies Wins CommerceNet Award (opens in a new window)
- DealTime Acquires Epinions (opens in a new window)
- Shopping.com — 2004 Form 10-K (opens in a new window)
- Ravikant v. Tolia (opens in a new window)
- Shopping.com — Acquisition Completion and Delisting (opens in a new window)
- Epinions Settlement a Black Eye to VCs? (opens in a new window)
- Venture Capital Litigation — Epinions and Shopping.com Representations (opens in a new window)
- Shopping.com Rebrands to eBay Commerce Network (opens in a new window)
- eBay to Shut Down the eBay Commerce Network on May 1 (opens in a new window)
- Shopping.com — Official Website (opens in a new window)