Ebay acquires open source e-commerce platform Magento

Only a few months after the acquisition of GSI Commerce, eBay now incorporates the open source e-commerce platform Magento for an undisclosed amount.

Allready over one year ago eBay invested, via PayPal, 22.5 million in Magento. For long that remained a secret, but because of the meetings with the shareholders eBay was forced to broadcast its news publicly. They were the first real external shareholder and by far the largest investor. With that first transaction, Ebay already owned 49% of the shares.

X.Commerce and Magento
eBay CEO John Donahoe said in the press release that Magento will be incorporated into the new project X.Commerce of eBay. X. Commerce will be an "integrated open source platform. " John Donahoe promises to reveal more details at a conference for developers in October. Probably it will then also be known what platform will eventually be standardized, and the role eBay sees for itself in the ecommerce world.

In an FAQ document for the customers of Magento, the company clarified that Magento will remain available separately, and that the project X.Commerce will go its own way. The Magento team of 290 employees with CEO Roy Rubin will remain at post in its headquarters in Los Angeles and offices in the Ukraine. The X.Commerce project will be lead by ex-Paypal Matthew Mengerink. Watch the video beneath to here what Roy Rubin has to say about the acquisition:



Worldwide, more than 60,000 sellers use Magento for their e-commerce activities. Some of the big names are Lenovo, Kipling, Etam, Dockers, Samsung, Ford, Nespresso and Goodyear.

Based on: Datanews.be