eBay launched new shopping sites on Wednesday called DoorOne in four countries: the UK, France, Germany and Australia. According to eBay's announcement on the Australian announcement board, "Doorone.com.au makes shopping simple by bringing together hundreds of thousands of products, hundreds of online retailers and millions of product reviews from the Epinions community. Doorone helps shoppers save time and empowers online shoppers to make informed choices."

eBay is marketing DoorOne as an aid for time-starved mainstream shoppers. The launch is accompanied by press releases citing survey data showing consumers are strapped for time. (In Australia, a DoorOne survey found 44 percent of respondents did not have the right balance between work and personal life; in the UK, 60 percent of respondents would forgo junk food to have a three day weekend.)

eBay's comparison-shopping service Shopping.com is managing the new marketplaces. eBay acquired Shopping.com in 2005, acquiring all outstanding shares of Shopping.com stock for approximately $634 million. Shopping.com had launched in 2003 as the new brand and corporate identity of Dealtime.com, founded in 1997, and Epinions.com, which was acquired by Dealtime in 2003.

Shopping.com already has marketplaces in the UK, France, Germany and Australia, and DoorOne looks like a mirror site with idendical product information - including epinion ratings - and advertisements, but with a different design. It's not apparent why eBay launched a nearly identical marketplace to Shopping.com. A search for black ipod nano on http://au.shopping.com brought back identical results as the same search on http://doorone.com.au, and clicking on the Join our Merchant Programme link on each site takes you to the same page on Shopping.com Australia. Calls to Shopping.com's press office were not returned by press time.

http://www.doorone.com