EBay Unloads StumbleUpon Recommendation Engine

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 14, 2009 - 8:32am.

San Jose, Calif. - Online auction giant eBay (NASD: EBAY) has sold its StumbleUpon recommendation engine back to its original founders for an undisclosed sum.

San Jose, Calif.-based eBay acquired StumbleUpon in 2007 for $75 million.

"After nearly two years as a subsidiary of eBay, today StumbleUpon returns to being an independent company," co-founder Garrett Camp wrote on the company's blog.

"StumbleUpon is now backed by myself and co-founder Geoff Smith, along with several great investors who've backed companies such as Google and Facebook."

The founders say their goal is to make StumbleUpon the Web's larges recommendation engine.

EBay's sale of StumbleUpon comes amid speculation that the company may be looking to sell off its Skype Internet telephone service as well.

http://snipurl.com/fw3pk (NY Times Bits Blog)

http://snipurl.com/fw3lu (DMW previous coverage)