Online auction behemoth eBay has bought price comparison site shopping.com for $620m.

Shopping.com offers price comparisons and consumer-written reviews. eBay products will be included on shopping.com's comparisons and product reviews will start appearing on its epinions site. The site claims 50 million unique monthly visitors and 400,000 review writers.

Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, said in a message to users that the deal would give eBay sellers another sales channel and a new set of customers. He said part of the impetus behind the deal was increasing sales of seasonal products on eBay.

The deal is subject to the usual regulatory and shareholder approval but assuming that is successful it will close in the third quarter of 2005.

Press release available here

Warm words from Bill Cobb here.

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