According to The Business Insider, ecommerce juggernaut eBay is acquiring up-and-coming local shopping startup Milo.com for a reported $75 million.
We’re independently confirming the acquisition and trying to get details of the transaction, but the deal would certainly make a lot of sense.
Update: founder and CEO Jack Abraham tells me he won’t comment on rumor or speculation. Which of course doesn’t mean anything.
The company’s mission is to track every product on every shelf of every (U.S.) store in real-time. It currently covers about 52,000 stores across the United States, delivering search results for some 3 million locally available products.
For eBay, it would be a chance to bridge online commerce with physical, in-store shopping, as Milo is really good at enabling people to find the best price and availability for products they want to buy immediately, offline.
Milo has raised roughly $5 million in venture capital from several early-stage investment firms and a slew of angel investors, including heavy hitters such as Keith Rabois, Kevin Hartz, Jawed Karim, Magid M. Abraham, Brian Pokorny, Aaron Patzer and Chris Dixon, among others.