Yahoo! And Junglee Offer Comparison Shopper Service
Shoppers Gain Convenience of Comparative Pricing and One-Stop Shopping Through VISA Shopping Guide by Yahoo!
SANTA CLARA & SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Nov. 24, 1997 --
Yahoo! Inc. and Jungleeú
Corporation today announced that they have teamed up to
provide users of the VISA Shopping Guide by Yahoo!
(shopguide.yahoo.com) with a powerful new comparison shopper
product search service. The new service allows consumers
to easily access and compare product and pricing information
from several VISA Shopping Guide by Yahoo! merchants
simultaneously, and then link to a specific merchant's site
to make a purchase.
"The comparison shopper service combines Junglee's
leading Web technology with the targeted reach of the Guide
to benefit both online merchants and shoppers," said Tim
Brady, vice president of production at Yahoo!. "With the
new service, merchants can reach a large, targeted audience
of potential buyers, and users now have a fast and
convenient way to do comparison shopping, saving valuable
time during the busy holiday season."
How It Works
The new comparison shopper feature is based on Junglee's
Canopy shopping application, which collects information from
multiple merchants within the VISA Shopping Guide by Yahoo!
and gives shoppers up-to-the-second product and pricing
information in an easy-to-read format. Each time a shopper
initiates a search, Canopy remembers the results. Shoppers'
behavior actually determines which items are cached so
delivery to the desktop occurs within seconds. Junglee's
Canopy application for shopping, based on patent-pending VDB
technology, has a unique two-fold intelligent agent
capability that combines dynamic querying and data
warehousing in ways that significantly improve the retrieval
time for comparison shopping, and dramatically increase the
numbers of retailer web sites that can be searched. For
users, that means fast retrieval of information from a
variety of merchants.
The new service reduces the time spent looking for
specific items by searching through the online merchants in
the VISA Shopping Guide by Yahoo! and compiling a single
list of all the vendors that offer the specified item, plus
availability, shipping, pricing and other information
helpful for making product choices. For example,
individuals looking for a specific book can go to the book
category on the Guide, type a book title, such as Runaway
Jury, in the title field, and in seconds see a list of more
than 25 versions of the popular John Grisham novel, offered
by several different Internet book stores within the guide,
in paperback, hardcover, or audio, with prices from $4.79 to
$26.95. Users can also see at a glance which merchants have
the book in stock. After making a selection, buying the
book is just a click away.
"We are pleased that Yahoo! recognized the value of our
technology for users of the VISA Shopping Guide," said
Rakesh Mathur, President and CEO of Junglee. "Together with
Yahoo!, we are offering consumers a value-added service and
giving retailers a venue to further promote their products
on one of the Web's most popular sites."
VISA Shopping Guide by Yahoo!
The VISA Shopping Guide features 27 different categories to
browse through and provides shoppers with merchants and
resources for the most popular areas of online shopping,
including everything from computer hardware and software,
apparel, sporting goods and electronics to cigars, music and
toys. Merchants include a variety of the most popular,
top-quality online vendors such as FAO Schwartz, FTD, The
Gap, REI, Spiegel, Virtual Vineyards and Wal-Mart to name a
few. In addition, the VISA Shopping Guide provides direct
access to product details from vendor sites and editorial
from magazines as well as a variety of online resources from
yahoo.com, the world's leading guide to the Internet.
About Junglee
Junglee Corporation(http://www.junglee.com) is turning the
Internet into THE database. Junglee creates giant databases
of highly targeted content that instantly link buyers and
sellers in ways never before possible, thus creating giant
new online markets. Junglee's patent-pending virtual
database (VDB) technology is based on award-winning research
from Stanford University. This powerful technology has the
potential to transform and create many markets. Two of the
applications where this transformation has already occurred
are web shopping and online recruitment. Junglee's Canopy
applications use VDB technology to gather, structure and
integrate content from a large variety and number of data
sources into highly targeted relational databases. Customers
and partners that are using Junglee solutions include,
Yahoo!, Ziff Davis, The Wall Street Journal, and The
Washington Post Company.
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is a global Internet media company
that offers a network of branded Web programming that serves
millions of users daily. As the first online navigational
guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the single largest guide
in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business
user reach, and is one of the most recognized brands
associated with the Internet. Yahoo! Inc. provides targeted
Internet resources and communications services for a broad
range of audiences, based on demographic, key-subject and
geographic interests. Yahoo! is headquartered in Santa
Clara, Calif.
# # #
Junglee is a trademark of Junglee Corp.
Press Contacts:
Jennifer Hwang
Yahoo!
jenhwang@yahoo-inc.com
(408) 731-3362
Lindsay Walsh
NRG PR
415-827-7026
lindsay@nrgpr.com
Ryan Mikolasik
VISA Int'l
650-432-5769
rmikolas@visa.com
Rosie Hausler
Junglee Corp.
408-522-2683
hausler@junglee.com
Abbe Patterson
Eiler Communications (for Junglee)
650-548-9088
abbe@eiler.com
