- Idealo
The company Idealo Internet GmbH is a
price comparison service launched inGermany in2000 , and since bought by theAxel Springer AG publishing company. The headquarters are inBerlin ,Germany . The Idealo website allows users to compare prices on a range of products from many shops.History
The company was founded by Martin Sinner, Dr. Albrecht von Sonntag, Christian Habermehl and others in 2000 [ [http://www.axelspringer.de/inhalte/unterneh/inhalte/investor/praesentationen/pdf/08_idealo_sinner.pdf Idealo Informational PDF] ] .
In July 2006 Idealo was taken over [ [http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/;art271,1909490 Springer rechnet mit mehr Gewinn] ] by the majority from the media company Axel Springer which purchased 74.9% of Idealo Internet GmbH for an undisclosed sum. [ [http://www.handelsblatt.com/news/Unternehmen/IT-Medien/_pv/grid_id/1215915/_p/201197/_t/ft/_b/1112267/default.aspx/springer-kauft-preissuchmaschine-idealo.html Springer kauft Preissuchmaschine Idealo ] ]
Technology
The Idealo sites use a combination of
screen scraping retailers' websites and CSV files supplied by the retailers themselves to create a unique database of product offers that is filtered by real people. These prices are matched against a bespoke backend database of products and this matching process is carried out by using afuzzy logic automated matching system as well as large teams of people also acting as a quality control filter.Business Model
Idealo is a consumer review and price comparison website that is similar to other price comparison services in that it is financed by advertisers on traffic quantities as well as quality.
Main Differentiators from competition
Product offers displayed on the Idealo website are normally ordered by price where the lowest is shown at the top of any listing, however on product listing pages the products are ordered by price, popularity, user rating or test results. This is in contrast to alternative price comparison services such as
Kelkoo andShopping.com , which feature only paying retailers and allow them to bid for position in the rankings.Each Idealo website also features a place for product reviews and shows a trend graph of each product costs over time.
External links
* [http://www.idealo.co.uk/ Idealo UK site]
* [http://news.idealo.co.uk/ Idealo UK News site]Notes
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