eBay Acquires StumbleUpon?

April 18th, 2007

Technology I add the question mark as there’s no official word from either company, but usually, a post from TechCrunch or GigaOM means it’s a safe bet.

But the question mark is also for the inevitable question, why? On the surface, it seems StumbleUpon would be a better fit for a search engine, meaning Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, or AOL.

I personally think StumbleUpon could have had a great home beneath the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google (oh, wait: Chris at 10e20 notices that Google has added a “random” feature themselves). Their slick video section could have also been a nice complement YouTube. But hey, we can’t have Google buying every cool company, now can we?

Other than that, I can’t really fathom the why of eBay and StumbleUpon. TechFold suggests that maybe eBay wants to help people discover other auctions. GigaOM thinks it’s all about the tool-bar.

Whatever the reason (or perhaps the lack of one), it’s feeling more and more like 1999 around here.

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