Kelkoo has today emailed all its advertisers to inform them that they have been acquired by newly formed venture capitalist company Jamplant. In a slightly surprising move Yahoo! has relinquished the comparison site but will maintain Kelkoo as the comparison engine behind Yahoo shopping, cars, finance and travel.
This is a strange move by Yahoo! who purchased Kelkoo for $576 M just 4 years ago. With comparison engines a key element of unviersal search and Google placing more and more emphasis on the product search with the introduction of plus box functionality in PPC the sense of this move by Yahoo could be questioned.
Whilst they may maintain they still have access to the functionality and you would hope this is part of the deal. I do worry what happens in the future if the relationship sours. In the current economic climate Yahoo will be happy to relinquish the overhead but it may come back to bite them in the future if they go down the same route as Google has. What do you think? Shrewd move to cut costs, or mistake they will regret in the future?