Nextag was an independent price comparison service website for products, travel, and education. It started originally as a website where buyers and sellers could negotiate prices for computers and electronics products. Since 2000, the current business model has focused on comparison shopping. NexTag also owns Hamburg, Germany based Guenstiger.de. It provides unique and accurate functionality of of a product across various sellers. In June 2007, Providence Equity Partners purchased a two-thirds majority of the company. Los Angeles based private equity firmRegent purchased the company in March 2015. Nextag provides merchants with various services including automated ROItracking system, promotional messaging platform for easy implementation of voucher codes and marketing messages, and Buyer Reviews and Trusted Seller program. Nextag's headquarters are in Redwood Shores, California. Additional offices are in Hamburg, Germany, Los Angeles, California, Tokyo, Japan, and Gurgaon, India. The Nextag.com web site went offline on 28 December 2018.
Awards and recognition
It was ranked by Time magazine as one of the fifty best websites of 2008. Time magazine called Nextag the "plainest comparative-shopping site on the Web", but commended it for quick and comprehensive shopping search results. Nextag not only provided customers with product reviews, but also, it provided the price history for each product. Other notable achievements include being listed in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500/Fast 50, Red Herring Top 100, San Francisco Business Times Fast 100, and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal Fast 50. As of 28 March 2018, it was ranked one of the "10 Top Price Comparison Websites" by Shopify.com.
Acquisitions
In November 2010, Nextag announced the acquisition of nextcoupons.com, a Santa Monica, California-based coupon company. This was a way for Nextag to bring in more talent and resources. In April 2011, Nextag acquired Germany's Guenstiger.de GmbH, the leading online comparison shopping website in Europe's market. In October 2011, Nextag acquired thingbuzz, a real-time social shopping platform that tracks the conversation about products in the social media sphere, in a bid to socialize the online shopping experience for its users. At the very end of that very year, FanSnap was acquired by Nextag. This was the fifth acquisition in only 15 months. According to former Nextag CEO Jeffrey Katz, these acquisitions enabled Nextag to be a one-stop ecommerce shop for various products including tickets.
Former CEO Jeffrey Katz accused Google of being a monopoly and killing small business competitors. Katz published an opinion piece clearly stating that users end up only seeing top search results that have been sponsored by companies. He claims that companies are able to pay Google for "that privilege". Google responded by stating that there is choice online and that "there has never been as much choice online as there is today" and noting that their advertisements are always marked clearly so users are able to see the sponsorship. Katz stressed ending the bias of the search results and to provide consumers with neutral search results.
