Become.com Goes Live with Web's Largest Search Engine for U.S. Shopping Information; Removes Registration Requirement and Adds Spell Check Feature

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 11, 2005--Become.com (www.become.com), a search engine that helps people find product reviews and relevant buying information, today announced the launch of a new 3.2 billion page shopping index, registration-free access to its search engine, and the introduction of product-focused spell checking. These milestones emphasize Become.com's commitment to providing shoppers with the most trusted, comprehensive, and easy-to-use source for product reviews and information.

More than 10,000 people registered on Become.com for an advance opportunity to try its beta site. Starting today, Become.com is expanding access, and registration is no longer required.

Become.com's new index includes over 3.2 billion pages of shopping related information from more than 40 million web sites. "This is a huge landmark for us," said Yeogirl Yun, founder, chairman and CTO. "By focusing our web crawling capability on U.S. sites that provide product research and buying information, Become.com has created the most comprehensive search engine for online shoppers less than one-year into our technology development," continued Yun.

Become.com has also added a spell check feature to further help searchers find the most accurate information. This is the best spelling correction technology specifically designed for the needs of the online shopper. Everything from the dictionary to the computer algorithms is designed for superior performance on shopping-related searches. Such searches frequently contain brand names, model numbers and other terms missing from most dictionaries.

"Combining the new index with our cutting-edge AIR(TM) technology for ranking web pages, we can give users the best search experience for their shopping needs. This shows the ability of our vertical search strategy to produce the first disruptive technology in internet search since Google," said Michael Yang, founder, president and CEO of Become.com.

About Become.com

Become.com is a search engine for shopping that helps people find product reviews and buying information on millions of products across the web. Founded by Michael Yang and Yeogirl Yun, founders of pioneering online comparison shopping site mySimon, Become.com indexes over 3.2 billion pages of shopping related information from over 40 million web sites and uses proprietary AIR(TM) (Affinity Index Ranking) technology to deliver targeted and relevant information for shopping searches.