Following Ebay’s full acquisition of Magento this week, the playing field for eCommerce looks set for a significant shake-up in the mid to long-term. Ebay has in fact been adding to its deck of eCommerce cards for some time, having already acquired Redlaser, a barcode scanning group, Milo, a local shopping site, mobile device eCommerce group WHERE and mobile payments group Figcard. The big question now is ‘What are they going to do with them?’

Recently, Ebay President and CEO John Donahoe went some way towards explaining their strategy.

“Technology-driven innovation is blurring the lines between online and offline commerce, changing the way consumers shop, and enabling retailers of all sizes to benefit from the latest innovations from the developer community. The feedback we’ve heard from external developers has been clear — they don’t just want payments or an eCommerce site; they want access to a full set of commerce capabilities to build complete shopping experiences for merchants. We believe the acquisition of Magento and creation of our X.Commerce group will enable us to meet developers’ needs and drive global commerce innovation for retailers and consumers.”

This tells us quite clearly what they’re planning to do, however what we are particularly interested in is how Ebay will integrate Magento into their X.Commerce environment. In particular, we’re keen to see what it means for the fast growing ‘virtual shopping centre’ model that other big players like Amazon have been operating for some time now.

These developments are intriguing for us at IE given that we recommend and implement Magento eCommerce solutions for a range of clients on a regular basis. We’re expecting exciting developments for both clients and Magento developers alike.