BookFinder.com

Last updated
BookFinder.com
BookFinder.com logo.png
Type of site
Comparison shopping website
Owner AbeBooks (Amazon)
URL www.bookfinder.com
CommercialYes
LaunchedJanuary 30, 1997;26 years ago (1997-01-30)
Current statusActive
Written in Perl [1]

BookFinder.com is a vertical search website that helps readers buy books online. The site's meta-search engine scans the inventories of over 100,000 booksellers located around the world. Among the books from sellers whose inventories are indexed, users can find the lowest price for a book of their choice from over 150 million volumes available for sale, and purchase titles directly from the bookseller, without a markup. [2] [3] The search engine is focused primarily on Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish language titles.

Contents

BookFinder.com was founded in 1997 by Anirvan Chatterjee, then a student at the University of California, Berkeley; it was one of the earliest vertical search engines for books online. [4] Originally known as MX BookFinder, [4] it was relaunched as BookFinder.com in 1998 and established as a standalone company based in Berkeley, California in 1999.

In 2005, BookFinder.com was acquired by AbeBooks, [5] which itself was purchased by Amazon.com on August 1, 2008. [6] [7]

BookFinder.com started operating in Europe under the JustBooks brand in 2006. There are currently JustBooks/BookFinder.com portals for France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amazon (company)</span> American multinational technology company

Amazon.com, Inc. is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been often referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", and is often regarded as one of the world's most valuable brands. It is considered to be one of the Big Five American technology companies, alongside Alphabet, Apple, Meta and Microsoft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inktomi</span> Former software company based in California

Inktomi Corporation was a company that provided software for Internet service providers (ISPs). It was incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. Customers included Microsoft, HotBot, Amazon.com, eBay, and Walmart.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ask.com</span> E-business

Ask.com is a question answering–focused e-business founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A9.com</span> Subsidiary of Amazon based in Palo Alto, California

A9.com was a former subsidiary of Amazon that developed search engine and search advertising technology. A9 was based in Palo Alto, California, with teams in Seattle, Bangalore, Beijing, Dublin, Iași, Munich and Tokyo. A9 has development efforts in areas of product search, cloud search, visual search, augmented reality, advertising technology and community question answering.

An online advertising network or ad network is a company that connects advertisers to websites that want to host advertisements. The key function of an ad network is an aggregation of ad supply from publishers and matching it with the advertiser's demand. The phrase "ad network" by itself is media-neutral in the sense that there can be a "Television Ad Network" or a "Print Ad Network", but is increasingly used to mean "online ad network" as the effect of aggregation of publisher ad space and sale to advertisers is most commonly seen in the online space. The fundamental difference between traditional media ad networks and online ad networks is that online ad networks use a central ad server to deliver advertisements to consumers, which enables targeting, tracking and reporting of impressions in ways not possible with analog media alternatives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Independent bookstore</span> Retail bookstore which is independently owned

An independent bookstore is a retail bookstore which is independently owned. Usually, independent stores consist of only a single actual store. They may be structured as sole proprietorships, closely held corporations or partnerships, cooperatives, or nonprofits. Independent stores can be contrasted with chain bookstores, which have many locations and are owned by large corporations, which often have other divisions besides bookselling.

AbeBooks is an e-commerce global online marketplace with seven websites that offer books, fine art, and collectables from sellers in over 50 countries. Launched in 1996, it specialises in used, rare and out-of-print books. AbeBooks has been a subsidiary of Amazon since 2008.

Ingram Content Group is an American service provider to the book publishing industry, based in La Vergne, Tennessee. It is a subsidiary of Ingram Industries.

LibraryThing is a social cataloging web application for storing and sharing book catalogs and various types of book metadata. It is used by authors, individuals, libraries, and publishers.

A comparison shopping website, sometimes called a price comparison website, price analysis tool, comparison shopping agent, shopbot, aggregator or comparison shopping engine, is a vertical search engine that shoppers use to filter and compare products based on price, features, reviews and other criteria. Most comparison shopping sites aggregate product listings from many different retailers but do not directly sell products themselves, instead earning money from affiliate marketing agreements. In the United Kingdom, these services made between £780m and £950m in revenue in 2005. Hence, E-commerce accounted for an 18.2 percent share of total business turnover in the United Kingdom in 2012. Online sales already account for 13% of the total UK economy, and its expected to increase to 15% by 2017. There is a huge contribution of comparison shopping websites in the expansion of the current E-commerce industry.

Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. The website's offices are located in San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Book Depository</span> UK-based online book seller (founded in 2004)

Book Depository was a Gloucester, United Kingdom based online book seller. Founded by a former Amazon employee, it operated from 2004 to 2023.

Walmart Labs became part of Walmart Global Tech, the technology and business services organization within Walmart. Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman founded Kosmix in 2005. In April 2011, Walmart acquired Kosmix and formed @WalmartLabs, a research division, out of it. In 2016, Walmart combined Walmart Labs and its information systems division (ISD) into one team called Walmart Technology. In August 2020, Walmart Technology launched its new identity as Walmart Global Tech as part of a new technology and shared services organization within the world's largest retailer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biblio.com</span>

Biblio is a privately owned international online marketplace specializing in rare and collectible books. Biblio was established in 2000 in Asheville, North Carolina, by Brendan Sherar and Michael Tracey. Biblio also provides e-commerce solutions and web services to multiple professional bookseller associations, including the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), the Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABA), and the Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers (ANZAAB).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kindle Store</span> Online e-book e-commerce store operated by Amazon

The Kindle Store is an online e-book e-commerce store operated by Amazon as part of its retail website and can be accessed from any Amazon Kindle, Fire tablet or Kindle mobile app. At the launch of the Kindle in November 2007, the store had more than 88,000 digital titles available in the U.S. store. This number increased to more than 275,000 by late 2008, and exceeded 765,000 by August 2011. In July 2014, there were over 2.7 million titles available. As of March 2018 there are over six million titles available in the U.S. Content from the store is purchased online and downloaded using either Wi-Fi or Amazon's Whispernet to bring the content to the user's device. One of the innovations Amazon brought to the store was one-click purchasing that allowed users to quickly purchase an e-book. The Kindle Store uses a recommendation engine that looks at purchase history, browsing history, and reading activity, and then suggests material it thinks the user will like.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Amazon</span>

Amazon is an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, and digital streaming. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", and is one of the world's most valuable brands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BookScouter.com</span> Vertical search website

BookScouter.com is a comparison shopping website that helps buy, sell, and rent textbooks and used books online. The website compares offers and prices from 30 booksellers and buyback vendors in the US and suggests the most fitting place to purchase or sell a given book. The website is mainly used by college students.

References

  1. Robert, Kirrily. "Site review: BookFinder". Perlbuzz. Archived from the original on 23 October 2014. Retrieved 14 July 2014.
  2. Maul, Kimberly (March 2, 2007). "Bookfinder: Eliminating obscurity". TheBookseller.com. Archived from the original on June 19, 2008. Retrieved 14 July 2014.
  3. 1 2 "About BookFinder.com". BookFinder.com. Retrieved 14 July 2014.
  4. 1 2 Max, D. T. (September 13, 1998). "Want to Buy a Rare Book? Click Here". The New York Times . Retrieved July 14, 2014.
  5. Needle, David (November 7, 2005). "Book Sites Unite". InternetNews. Retrieved July 14, 2014.
  6. "Amazon.com Acquires AbeBooks" (Press release). Seattle, Washington & Victoria, British Columbia: Amazon.com. Archived from the original on 2017-06-20. Retrieved 2014-07-14.
  7. Arrington, Michael. "Amazon To Acquire AbeBooks, And With It A Stake In LibraryThing". TechCrunch .

Further reading