Kelkoo

Kelkoo is a shopping search engine and a price comparison portal.

Business

The portal Kelkoo is a European shopping and price comparison service that was founded in 1999 in France and allows users to find information about products they want to buy, including price and dealer information. In 2004 the company was bought by Yahoo!. Kelkoo operates in 10 European countries: UK, France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium. On November 21, 2008 Yahoo! Kelkoo sold to Jamplant, a private equity firm. According to Hitwise Kelkoo UK has recorded the highest number of visitors since 2004 under the Price Comparisons.

End of 2003, Kelkoo Europe recorded about 23 million users a month; According to Nielsen NetRatings Unique Audience Home & Work Kelkoo had in November 2003 in Germany 2.161 million users. Kelkoo operates by its own account has been profitable since the fourth quarter of 2002.

History

Kelkoo was founded by Pierre Chappaz and Mauricio Lopez in 1999. The initial investment of $ 3 million was provided by Banexis ventures and Innovacom available. After Kelkoo merged with three other European companies, it united by their founder Siljubergsåsen, William Klippgen, Philip Wilkinson and Jorge Garcia in a collective.

In April 2000, merged Kelkoo dondecomprar.com within a few days with the Spanish company and the British competition Shopgenie. In September of the same year Kelkoo merged with the Norwegian Zoomit.comund paid the Zoomit shareholders shares worth one-third of the total Kelkoo 's capital, which Zoomit the largest unit was within the "new" Kelkoo.

In June 2003, Kelkoo cooperated with MSN, the European subsidiary of Microsoft and delivered the search results and product in the shopping channel. A similar agreement was announced in June 2004 with Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves ).

In April 2004, Kelkoo was acquired by Yahoo! Inc for € 450 million. Yahoo! explained this step with the opportunity to better target now advertise at the product level for advertisers.

In October 2005, a book in France on Kelkoo appeared entitled " Ils ont réussi leur start -up! Success - story de La Kelkoo ." The authors are Julien Codorniou and Cyrille de Lasteyrie.

In November 2008, Yahoo! Inc. Kelkoo sold to the private equity market, society Jamplant.

Origin of the name

The name " Kelkoo " is a phonetic spelling of the French question "Quel coût? " ( " At what price ?"). Alternative explanation is "Quel coup ", " What a bargain! ".

Business Model

Kelkoo has been profitable since Q4 2002. Similar to other Price Comparisons, Kelkoo uses a large part of his marketing on bringing users to your page through SEO and the Launching of partner sites.