eBay launched a new shopping site on Wednesday called DoorOne in four countries: the UK, France, Germany and Australia. The DoorOne sites are currently identical to eBay's comparison shopping site Shopping.com in terms of features, though it sports a different design and branding. eBay launched DoorOne because it does not own the Shopping.com URLs in all countries.
eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy said in local markets, eBay wants to have local URLs. For example, Shopping.com's site in Australia is http://au.shopping.com because it does not own the URL http://www.shopping.com.au.
Durzy said the DoorOne launch also gives them the opportunity to experiment with different features that might attract new users or result in more searches and more purchases. He said they currently have no plans to phase out Shopping.com sites in countries where they have launched DoorOne, though "down the road, who knows what will happen," and he said it's hard to say whether eBay would roll out DoorOne in additional countries.
eBay acquired Shopping.com in 2005.
http://www.doorone.com
Related article:
"eBay Launches New Shopping Marketplace Called DoorOne"
http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m09/i27/s05
