Ecommerce giant eBay (EBAY 0.31%) announced today on its blog that it has acquired price research firm Decide.com. The official terms of the deal were not disclosed in the announcement, but it is expected that all of Decide's services, website, and mobile apps will no longer be available after Sept. 30.
The Seattle-based Decide.com started three years ago and had raised $17 million in venture capital, including investments from funds led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (Vulcan Capital) and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz (Maveron).
eBay noted the immediate goals for Decide's developers would encompass "helping eBay build an improved pricing tool that helps sellers better price their merchandise and sell items faster," while also providing insights that will "help sellers better compete."
Decide.com CEO Mike Fridgen said in the blog post that "This is an exciting opportunity to bring Decide's expertise in data and predictive analytics to the worldwide commerce leader and empower over 25 million eBay sellers."
In its blog post, eBay noted its efforts to grow through acquisitions in the budding areas of e-commerce, including social, local, and mobile technologies through its acquisitions of Hunch, Milo, and RedLaser, respectively. Those acquisitions all commenced in 2010 and 2011.
