eBay Acquires Milo, a Leading Local Shopping Engine

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) today announced it has acquired Milo, a leading local shopping engine that provides consumers access to accurate, real-time, local store inventory and pricing, giving them even more choice and flexibility when shopping online. By acquiring Milo and integrating its technology into the eBay.com platform and mobile offerings, eBay will be able to provide consumers with access to millions of products from approximately 50,000 stores across all 50 U.S. states. Additionally, eBay sellers will have the opportunity to reach more shoppers.

“Reaching potential customers wherever they may be – whether it's online or right outside the door – is imperative in order to stay competitive and continue bringing foot traffic into our store.”

“Local commerce companies like Milo are blurring the lines between in-store and online shopping,” said Mark Carges, chief technology officer and senior vice president, global products, eBay Marketplaces. “By making accurate, real-time, local store inventory and pricing available to online and mobile shoppers, we see a huge opportunity for local retailers, small businesses and eBay sellers to reach more buyers, and for consumers to make more informed buying decisions.”

Carges continued, “Since eBay is an online marketplace and doesn’t compete with brick-and-mortar stores, adding local store inventory to the eBay marketplace is a natural extension of what we’ve been doing for 15 years – bringing buyers and sellers together to access the largest selection available anywhere.”

With the acquisition of Milo, eBay strengthens its position as the place where consumers go for their shopping needs. According to comScore Inc., eBay handled more than 2 billion U.S. product searches in the third quarter.¹ Amazon saw 847 million, while Google handled 226 million product searches over the same period.¹

With more than 140 retail partners, including nearly 90 small and medium-sized businesses, the company believes that Milo will be a great fit within eBay’s overall marketplaces business. Like eBay, Milo enables small businesses to compete with large retailers. And, through the addition of Milo, eBay plans to bring the inventories of even more small local retailers online and to help existing eBay sellers with brick-and-mortar locations and compatible inventory systems to sell locally.

“As one of the last true brick-and-mortar stores for skaters, we’ve been extremely fortunate to have our unique product selection visible to shoppers on Milo.com,” said Konstantin Shostakovich, manager of Black Diamond Sports in Palo Alto, Calif. “Reaching potential customers wherever they may be – whether it's online or right outside the door – is imperative in order to stay competitive and continue bringing foot traffic into our store.”

eBay plans to integrate Milo’s local product feeds into both its online marketplace and its leading mobile applications, providing millions of U.S. shoppers with accurate, real-time product pricing and local product availability inventory. eBay's barcode-scanning iPhone application RedLaser will soon be available with the addition of Milo local results.

eBay expects that the integration of Milo on both its site and mobile applications will help consumers find great deals, whether looking to buy online or in-store. It will also help retailers of all sizes reach a large volume of shoppers who are researching products online before they make a purchase decision. Forrester predicts that cross-channel shopping – researching online, buying offline – sales will be $1.3 trillion and account for nearly 50% of total retail sales by 2013.²

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. eBay does not expect this acquisition to have a material impact on its financial guidance as issued in conjunction with its third quarter earnings release on October 20, 2010.

¹ComScore Inc.

²Forrester Report, “US Online Sales Forecast: 2008-2013”, Feb 2, 2009

About eBay

Founded in 1995 in San Jose, Calif., eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) connects hundreds of millions of buyers and sellers globally on a daily basis through eBay, the world's largest online marketplace, and PayPal, which enables individuals and businesses to securely, easily and quickly send and receive online payments. We also reach millions through specialized marketplaces such as StubHub, the world's largest ticket marketplace, and eBay Classifieds sites, which together have a presence in more than 1,000 cities around the world. For more information about the company and our global portfolio of online brands, visit www.ebayinc.com.

About Milo

Milo is a leading local shopping engine that tracks real-time local availability and prices and enables shoppers to research products online and find them in-stock at a local store. The website, Milo.com, also provides detailed product information and user reviews. Milo currently tracks millions of products across both hard goods and soft goods categories and maintains more than 140 merchant relationships, which account for approximately 50,000 stores in all 50 states. Founded in 2007, the company has offices in Palo Alto, Calif. For more information, visit www.milo.com.

Forward-Looking Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements relating to the future performance of our businesses that are based on its current expectations, forecasts and assumptions. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding eBay’s plans for Milo, including integrating Milo into the eBay.com platform and eBay mobile applications, increasing product selection, and the expected impact of eBay's acquisition of Milo on eBay's financial guidance. Those statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those discussed. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: the continuing impact of the global economic downturn, changes in political, business and economic conditions, including any conditions that affect ecommerce growth; fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; the company’s ability to profitably integrate, manage and grow Milo and other businesses that have been acquired recently or may be acquired in the future; the company’s need to increasingly achieve growth from its existing users, particularly in its more established markets; the company’s ability to deal with the increasingly competitive ecommerce, mobile commerce and local commerce environment, including competition for its sellers from other trading sites and other means of selling, and competition for its buyers from other merchants, online and offline; the company’s need to manage an increasingly large enterprise with a broad range of businesses of varying degrees of maturity and in many different geographies; the effect of management changes and business initiatives; the company’s need and ability to manage other regulatory, tax and litigation risks as its services are offered in more jurisdictions and applicable laws become more restrictive; any changes the company may make to its product offerings; the company’s ability to upgrade and develop its systems, infrastructure and customer service capabilities at reasonable cost; and the company’s ability to maintain site stability and performance on all of its sites while adding new products and features in a timely fashion.

More information about potential factors which could affect our business and results is included in eBay's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009, its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, its Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other periodic filings. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to eBay on the date hereof, and eBay assumes no obligation to update such statements.