LeGuide.com Group, a pan-European publisher of online shopping guides, comparison websites and the like, has acquired online shopping portal Ciao from Microsoft.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but LeGuide.com says it paid for the Ciao assets in cash and didn’t need to take on debt to finance the transaction.
Read more over at TechCrunch Europe.
Ciao is an online community that critically reviews and rates millions of products and services for the benefit of other consumers. Available free of charge to consumers in local language versions in major western European and North American markets, Ciao combines unbiased consumer reviews and up-to-date price information from hundreds of online retailers to make it the most comprehensive source of intelligent shopping on the web. Microsoft purchased Ciao in August, 2008.
LeGuide.com is a leading European publisher of Internet shopping guides, shopping search engines and price comparison websites. The French company is operational in 14 European countries and edits websites in 9 languages.
Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured. Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market. Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...
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