On the internet, a price comparison service (also known as shopping comparison or price engine) allows individuals to see lists of prices for specific products. Most price comparison services do not sell products themselves, but source prices from retailers from whom users can buy. In the UK, these services made between £120m and £140m in revenue in 2005 , and is growing at an annual rate of 30% to 50%.

History of price comparison services

The internet boom of the late 1990s made price comparison profitable.

Price comparison services were initially implemented as client-side add-ins to the Netscape and Internet explorer browsers, and required that additional software be downloaded and installed. After these initial efforts, comparison shopping migrated to the server so that the service would be accessible to anyone with a browser.

Services are now offered by websites dedicated to price comparison and by major portals such as Yahoo!.

Shopping comparison

In the late 1990s, as more people gained access to the internet, a range of shopping portals were built that listed retailers for specific product genres. Retailers listed paid the website a fixed fee for appearing. These were little more than an online version of the Yellow Pages. As technology has improved, a newer "breed" of shopping Web portals is being created that are changing both the business model and the features and functionality offered. These sites do not "aggregate" data-feeds provided from the retailers, they search and retrieve the data directly from each retailer site. This allows for a much more comprehensive list of retailers and the ability to update the data in real-time.

Generic portals and search engines launched similar services and companies that stood to benefit from increased internet shopping (especially credit card and delivery firms) launched similar sites. Many of these services have since closed.

Early price comparison services

Through 1998 and 1999, various firms developed technology that searched retailers websites for prices and stored them in a central database. Users could then search for a product, and see a list of retailers and prices for that product. Advertisers did not pay to be listed, but paid for every click on a price. Globally, similar websites were launched, and the period continued to see various websites launched, merged, acquired and closed.

Consolidations and acquisitions

2000

• Kelkoo merged with Dondecomprar and ShopGenie. Later that year Kelkoo and Zoomit finalized their £100 million merger with ZoomIt. Kelkoo's investors owned about two thirds of the merged company
• CNet acquired mySimon for common stock worth approximately $700M
• ShopSmart relaunched under Barclays ownership

2002

• Barclays announced that they were to close ShopSmart, with all traffic redirected to Kelkoo.