SparkBuy acquired by Google

sparkbuy.com

31 points·ph0rque··8 comments

Certainly sold quickly - our startup http://www.happybuy.com/ is in a similar space (innovating on top of e-commerce sites for price tracking, price prediction and recommendations) so in a way its good to see there is one less competitor.

Sounds more like this was a talent acquisition as the technology from SparkBuy is something that Google could have replicated relatively quickly if they wanted.

Seems like if you take a retail vertical, use some solr/lucene to give you faceted search, you'll be golden.

I know it's not that simple, but the tech is very accessible right now to do just that.

Is the service discontinued? The site itself is just background image now.

"And while we won't be offering services at sparkbuy.com any more, stay tuned for truckloads of new awesome from our team at Google."

Here's an article with more info:

http://www.geekwire.com/2011/google-buys-sparkbuy-search-eng...

Congrats!

How much?

Companies don't have to reveal if it's less than $50M, so, unfortunately, the only answer you'll absolutely get is "< that $50M" :/

They had investors and (with their investment being so recent) they certainly had $ in the bank, so you can also rule out the "nice signing bonus" outcome. With $1M on a $3M pre-money (guess), they'd have to sell for north of $4 for the investors to get a return on their investment.

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