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Microsoft buys shopping comparison engine JellyFish

Microsoft buys shopping comparison engine JellyFish

Microsoft has just acquired JellyFish, a comparative shopping engine.

The team in Redmond Washington has been working on shopping and commerce components for Live Search, and the recent addition of JellyFish to the Live team could mean some new improvements for the MSN Shopping space.

Jellyfish calls itself the "internet's first buying engine". The service pieces together the shopping puzzle with information and content relating to the particular item you might be interested in and presents you with trusted merchants to take your pick from. Jellyfish makes money by taking a share of the revenue associated with the purchase and actually split it with the buyer. Advertisers in the JellyFish marketplace compete by paying more to get higher on the listings. This in turn makes the end price lower. Everyone's happy. Customer got their product cheaper, and merchant got a sale.

What does this mean for users of Live.com search? We're sure a few more highly targeted and relevant product links will be appearing in the search results. But the real question is, will Microsoft continue the JellyFish revenue sharing model, or keep all that cash for themselves?

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