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Apr. 18, 2007 at 4:32pm Eastern by Chris Sherman
StumbleUpon Acquired By eBay: "Just Rumors," Says Founder
The blogosphere is abuzz with rumors that eBay is acquiring StumbleUpon, but they're "just rumors," Garrett Camp, one of StumbleUpon's founders just told me on the phone. "There have been rumors before and that's what they are now," Camp said.
Of course, if the company is in play, Camp would likely be bound by non-disclosure agreements, so the rumors could possibly turn out to have some merit. We'll follow the story and report any further details if and when they are confirmed.
Meanwhile, it's interesting reading the speculation about why eBay, a vast auction site, would be interested in acquiring a comparatively small, selective web search service (more about StumbleUpon and how it works in my Q&A With Garrett Camp, Founder & Chief Architect, StumbleUpon).
Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch with eBay Acquiring StumbleUpon offers a bit of background on the rumors, which have been going on since November (he says Google and AOL are also potential suitors), and Om Malik speculates that StumbleUpon might be a credible competitor to Google if integrated into the eBay's Skype client in his Why eBay wants Stumbleupon post.
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By Chris Sherman
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See Related Stories In: Business Issues: Acquisitions & Investments, Search Engines: StumbleUpon
For a long time, I have believed that eBay should have spent money on advertising venue oriented companies, and thought that the Skype acquisition was a stupid move. Only now, it seems to me that eBay's leadership is coming to the same conclusion! Read the rest of my thesis.