Tim Finin (finin@cs.umbc.edu)
Sat, 13 Nov 1999 11:53:22 -0500
Interesting zdnet article at:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2384168,00.html?chkpt=zdnnsmsa
Shopping bots: intelligent at last
Germany's Acses.com, an early entry into the shopping bot
arena will roll out a new product and a new name Monday,
following its acquisition earlier this month by German
retailing giant Bertelsmann AG.
DealPilot, as the company is now known, will launch its DealPilot
Express service, a browser plug-in that lets users check competing
prices -- complete with shipping, taxes and any duties -- at the click
of a button.
The service will be initially available for books CDs and movies but
DealPilot CEO Elisabeth Schick said the company hopes to double the
number of categories it searches in the next few months.
Since the company's founding by two students as a book search site in
July 1997, the market has exploded. Shopping bots are now a standard
feature on most portal sites. Competitors like MySimon allow users to
search hundreds of categories, while companies like Frictionless
Commerce use decision trees to help users decide what to buy.
DealPilot's Web-based service does offer some neat tricks of its own -
specifically a feature that allows users to shop for the best price on
a group of items. But that shopping cart feature will not be available
in the initial rollout of the browser-based version.
...
-
**See http://igec.umbc.edu/ectech/ for info on the ecTech mailing list.**
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sat Nov 13 1999 - 11:49:36 EST