Searching for an improved online shopping experience? Google has a new plan

Google offered this example of how an online store using Google Commerce Search could look, with searchable products sortable by category, color, size or price. Credit: Google.

Just in time for the holidays, Google Inc. took the wraps off a new business, one designed to help big online retailers make their websites easier to search.

With Google Commerce Search -- a service that will cost retailers $50,000 or more for an annual subscription -- the Internet giant will set up a search function on an online retailer's website, which Google says will dramatically improve user experience and drive sales. The product represents a challenge to Google's archrival Microsoft Corp., as well as to Oracle Corp., Endeca Technologies Inc. and other firms that run retailers' websites.

The main selling points are that everything that has made Google a dominant company -- vast computing resources, algorithms that provide right results, and even the ability to fix your typos and find what you're looking for -- will help people navigate clunky retail websites that cause a major stumbling block to sales.

"Search was the most important aspect of an e-commerce experience," said Nitin Mangtani, a lead product manager at Google. People go to a website looking to buy, say, a laptop, and they search the site for the item they want. "If the users are able to find that laptop easily, they are more likely to buy the product," Mangtani said. "If it takes them eight to 10 seconds, and they can't find it easily, they leave the website."

Whereas people have high expectations, websites weren't delivering, so Google saw an opportunity, the company said.

Search engine analyst Greg Sterling said...

Skype founders sue EBay

Ed Ho, right, demonstrates the online telecommunications service Skype with friend Daren Tsui, on screen, at Ho's Palo Alto, Calif., home. Credit: Paul Sakuma / Associated Press.

The founders of Skype filed a lawsuit against EBay Inc. today, a step that could spoil EBay’s $2-billion deal to sell a controlling stake in the Internet phone company to a group of private investors.

The suit, filed in a Delaware court, was brought by Joltid Ltd. and Joost N.V., which are owned by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. The lawsuit contends that former Joost chief executive Michelangelo Volpi used confidential information to sell a 65% stake in Skype to a private equity consortium. The deal was announced by EBay about two weeks ago.

Volpi recently became a partner at Index Ventures Management S.A., one of the investors buying a majority stake in Skype. The lawsuit alleges that Volpi leaked Joost’s company secrets and accuses him of “civil conspiracy.” Volpi had a fiduciary duty to protect the information, the lawsuit charges, and not “use it for his own benefit.” Index Ventures is also listed as a defendant in the suit.

EBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005. It’s been reported that Zennstrom and Friis want to buy Skype back, but their bid has been unsuccessful.

Today's lawsuit is just the latest in an ongoing dispute between Skype's founders and EBay. Earlier this week, the founders sued the investors and EBay in U.S. District Court in Northern California, charging   copyright infringement.

-- W.J. Hennigan

Listia is like EBay, except everything is free (almost)

Pair of used snowboard boots that can be bid on for free at Listia, a new auction site. Credit: Listia.

A new auction site, Listia, allows you to bid on items using no-cost credits instead of money.

You get 500 credits just for signing up, and you can use them to bid on a variety of items including used books and televisions. You can also sell your own stuff on the site -- the number of credits you get from the high bidder can be tucked away for your own bidding.

And so on and so forth in this kind of utopian version of EBay.

Except there is one situation for which you might have to spend money. Let's say you really, really want the pair of snowboard boots listed on the site, but the bidding has gone beyond the amount of credits you've accumulated. In that case, Listia will be happy to sell you credits at the rate of $1 per 10 credits. 

There are no fees to buy or sell on the site, however. The buyer and seller have to work out shipping or delivery between themselves.

It's no surprise that most of the stuff up for bidding on the site, which does not sport any advertising as yet, seems to be items that people want to clear out of the house. And that's the idea, according to the site's FAQ, which states it's for "stuff you just don't need, but have a hard time throwing away."

Some people are perhaps taking that too literally. One of the items currently up for bidding is an "Old Sock," which is indeed described as "an old white sock."

No need to rush over to try and get it. So far, no one has placed a bid.  

To encourage bidding of a more serious nature, the site occasionally throws in new "rewards" items. Currently, it has listed a Flip video recorder and a Samsung 32-inch LCD TV. 

-- David Colker

Mark Madsen: Clipper, ex-Laker and domain name speculator

Clippers forward Mark Madsen. Credit: AP

In a strange series of events befitting the shady world of domain name speculation, New Jersey state police arrested a man on suspicion of stealing the rights to p2p.com and selling them to Los Angeles Clipper forward Mark Madsen.

Daniel Gonclave, 25, of Union, N.J., is suspected of hacking into the GoDaddy.com account of p2p.com's previous owner, transferring ownership to himself and then selling it to Madsen on eBay for $111,000.  Although the domain name may have been illegally acquired, Madsen reportedly still owns it.

What ever would the "Mad Dog" want with a website associated with peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing? 

It turns out, surprisingly, that Madsen is an active domain name speculator. That's the rather odd subculture of people who buy domain names like beer.com and yeti.tv, hoping to resell them down the road at awesome profit.

Several blogs have linked Madsen to account names on EBay and various message boards, where he looks to have sold or tried to sell dozens of low-, middle- and high-dollar domain names. Those included Internetdating.com, denial.com, carbohydrates.com and even registeredsexoffender.com.

Tom Ziller at Fanhouse has quite a bit more. He writes:

Madsen's activity on DNForum, as well as the big-dollar purchase of P2P.com, indicates the player was in deep in this industry ... A year ago, he offloaded dozens of Canadian domain names-- including lovelies like chocolatecandy.ca, accordians.ca, schooners.ca and the epic menstrualperiods.ca -- for $21,000. On eBay, he sold two domains in June for a total of $7,000.

A person sounding very much like Madsen answered a phone number listed in one of the forum posts, but declined to comment on the New Jersey case, saying he and his attorneys planned to put out a statement about the situation Tuesday.

Madsen is an active Twitterer and maintains a blog where he (irregularly) posts thoughts about the basketball world.  But neither his Twitter stream not his blog yields any evidence of Madsen's low-profile second career as a speculator.

Follow my variable-rate stream of tech and culture-related musings at @dsarno

-- David Sarno

EBay plans to spin off Skype in an IPO (or maybe sale)

EBay and Skype are breaking up. Credit: manu contreras via Flickr.

Taking the first steps to unwind its strange 2005 marriage, EBay said today that it plans to spin off Internet phone service Skype through an initial public offering in 2010. The news comes a day after the San Jose online auction company said it would sell Internet search company StumbleUpon back to its founders.

Both announcements signal that EBay is making good on its promise to investors that it will focus on its online marketplace, rather than on the assorted businesses it has acquired over the last three years.

"Separating Skype will allow EBay to focus entirely on our two core growth engines -- e-commerce and online payments -- and deliver long-term value to our stockholders," EBay Chief Executive John Donahoe said in a release.

EBay bought Skype nearly four years ago with the idea that it could use voice over Internet protocol software to enable buyers and sellers to communicate (think haggling over prices) while conducting transactions. But some observers say that Skype has been a distraction for management, and ...

Meg Whitman's entrance in California governor's race sets up Silicon Valley showdown

Former EBay Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman, shown here in 2005, announced that she's running for governor of California. (Credit: Ben Margot / Associated Press)

After months of dancing around the subject, former EBay Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman today finally made it official: She's running for governor of California as a Republican.

The announcement sets up a Silicon Valley showdown: Her prime competition from the GOP ranks looks to be Steve Poizner, the former high-tech executive who became California's insurance commissioner. Poizner made a fortune selling his start-up SnapTrak, to San Diego-based Qualcomm in 2000.

As Michael Finnegan writes today in a Times story about the gubernatorial contest, the candidates each are so rich from their success in high-tech business that they can afford to spend millions of dollars campaigning. He writes:

As a first-time candidate, Whitman faces enormous risks. She has never undergone the intense media scrutiny that accompanies any serious bid for high office. She has only begun to meet the state's vast network of Republican Party players. And with no experience in state office, she must study quickly the panoply of issues facing the nation's most populous state, among them a surge in unemployment, substandard public schools, traffic-clogged freeways and a dysfunctional Legislature that routinely fails to overcome budget shortfalls.

Another Republican considering a run: former Silicon Valley congressman Tom Campbell. Their potential challengers on the Democratic side include Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, as well Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Whitman's chief rival: Steve Poizner, who is also a former Silicon Valley executive. (Photo: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

-- Chris Gaither

EBay posts first-ever quarterly sales drop

EBay reported lower fourth-quarter profit and its first-ever drop in quarterly sales, as the global economic slowdown and the stronger dollar hurt its business.

The online auction company recorded net income of $367 million, or 29 cents a share, for the last three months of 2008. That was down 31% from $531 million, or 39 cents a share, a year earlier.

Net revenue fell 7% to $2.04 billion, reversing the persistent growth EBay has posted since its founding in 1995. Sales at the Marketplaces unit, which includes its core online auction business as well as Shopping.com, StubHub and other online businesses, fell 16% to $1.27 billion.

The San Jose company's shares fell nearly 6% in after-hours trading, giving back all the gains they made in regular trading, when they rose 73 cents to $13.28.

Excluding some items, EBay reported income of 41 cents a share versus 45 cents a year ago. That beat some analysts' estimates of 40 cents a share. EBay said it expected first-quarter revenue to be $1.80 billion to $2.05 billion with net earnings of 21 to 23 cents a share and operating profit of 32 to 34 cents a share.

For the full year, EBay reported net income of $1.78 billion, or $1.36 a share, on sales of $8.54 billion, compared with net income of $348 million, or 25 cents a share, on sales of $7.67 billion in 2007.

“While the holiday season was tough and competitive, our overall results for 2008 were strong,” Chief Executive John Donahoe said.

The drop in fourth-quarter sales wasn’t a surprise. When EBay ...

Online game economies weathering real-world financial blizzard

Millions of Americans are spending more of their time these days in Azeroth, a land where they don't have to worry about economic crises. There, you can make a living as a tailor, healer or equipment vendor. And if you find yourself falling on hard times, you don't collect welfare. You go out and kill more gold-toting monsters.

Azeroth, the fictional world in which the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game World of Warcraft is set, is bustling with activity. Gearing up for the release of the second expansion pack, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, which hits stores today, the game's 11 million players worldwide logged more hours in the virtual world than usual -- a phenomenon seen by developer Blizzard whenever an update is imminent.

Activision Blizzard, the parent company that lost more than $4 billion in market value in just one week last month, is looking for a huge boost from the update to its best-selling title. "Historically, recessions have kind of affected us less -- not that we're unaffected," said Rob Pardo, Blizzard's executive vice president of game design. "But I think gaming, in particular, has a lot of value for the money."

The new version adds a slew of original items and quests for players to complete, as well as upping the maximum level a character can achieve, from 70 to 80.

One might think the U.S. economic snowstorm would cause users tight on money to cut the $15 monthly fee from their budgets faster than ...

EBay posts third-quarter profit, warns about year ahead

EBay Inc. posted a third-quarter profit today that beat analysts' forecasts. The online auction giant reversed a loss from the same period a year earlier, when it took a big charge stemming from its acquisition of telecommunications company Skype.

EBay earned $492 million, or 38 cents a share, compared with a loss of $936 million, or 69 cents a share, a year earlier, when it took a $1.4-billion write-down for Skype. Excluding certain items, EBay said it would have made $592 million, or 46 cents a share, in the quarter. Analysts were expecting 41 cents a share.

Revenue grew 12% to $2.12 billion, a bit lower than anticipated. Analysts were expecting revenue of $2.13 billion.

But EBay warned that its full-year revenue would fall below its previous forecast as the company attempts to revive growth in its online auction business.

Shares fell 14% in regular trading to $15.33 on fears that the deepening recession would hammer EBay's online auction business. Similar concerns hit online retailer Amazon.com Inc., which fell 13% to $48.72.

EBay's stock has sold off sharply in recent months. The San Jose company is in the midst of an overhaul. Last week EBay warned that third-quarter revenue would be at the low end of a previous forecast of $2.1 billion to $2.15 billion and that it planned to cut 10% of its staff.

"We believe that macro weakness will continue to crimp consumer demand," Youssef Squali of Jefferies & Co. wrote in a research note Tuesday.

Chief Executive John Donahoe is trying to shake up the business to catch up with rival Amazon.com, sometimes making moves that have riled online sellers.

He said today that he was overall pleased with EBay's performance in light of the "very challenging external environment" that he expects to continue into the fourth quarter and beyond. "These are turbulent times for which no one has the perfect playbook," he said. He also said turmoil in the markets was having an effect on consumer spending and that EBay was feeling "that impact across all of our platforms."

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: EBay CEO John Donahoe. Credit: Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images

EBay trimming jobs, buying companies to shore up business in turbulent times

Against the backdrop of an ailing economy, Internet auction house and retailer EBay said today it would lay off 10% of its global workforce, or about 1,000 employees and several hundred temporary workers, in an effort to shore up its businesses. EBay also said it plans to spend about $1.3 billion on acquisitions to pump up its online payment and classified advertising businesses as it tries to brace itself for the spreading financial crisis.

Shares fell as much as 8% in early trading to their lowest level in more than five years. Investors are concerned that EBay's online auction business is vulnerable as consumer spending declines, the U.S. housing market slumps and fuel prices remain high. The auction business has already faced slowing growth over the past few years. Chief Executive John Donahoe warned that economic weakness and the stronger dollar were affecting Ebay.

The San Jose company said the move to cut its 15,000-person work force was unrelated to the potential slowdown in e-commerce. Instead EBay is trying to make its business more competitive in the face of declining profits and stagnant growth.

EBay said it would take a restructuring charge of as much as $80 million in the fourth quarter. It will also eliminate open positions.

It also said it would hit the low end of its revenue forecast of $2.1 billion to $2.15 billion, but exceed the high end of its earnings forecast range of 39 cents to 41 cents per share, before certain items. The company had previously said it would report earnings between 30 cents and 32 cents a share. It will release its earnings on Oct. 15.

EBay had been the subject of layoff rumors for weeks.

The company also announced that it would buy PayPal rival Bill Me Later, an online payments firm based in Timonium, Md., for $945 million in cash and stock. It will combine Bill Me Later with ...