ebay sheds StumbleUpon

BANGALORE, INDIA: StumbleUpon, the random-Web site-finding tool bar, has been cast away by eBay years after it was acquired for $75 million. The company had bought the tool bar way back in year 2007.

eBay has put its StumbleUpon days behind it, making tool bar company return to itself as an investor-backed startup, said The Business Insider website.

According to the website, StumbleUpon has gone on its own as it has nothing to do with online auctions and it is being expected that eBay might offload another firm soon and that could be Skype , which also has nothing to do with online auctions.

Having returned to a status of being an investor-backed startup, StumbleUpon will now be backed by original founders Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith, as well as a number of well-known investors including Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners, and August Capital, it said.

New CEO Camp has been quoted as saying that StumbleUpon has realized that there no long-term synergies existed between it and eBay, and hence, the parting of ways.

The new status now brings to StumbleUpon the space to innovate and focus on becoming the Web’s largest recommendation service.

It is seen that the company will now be focused on helping people discover interesting content by increasing the accessibility of the StumbleUpon service and the quality of recommendations. New features are to come soon too, say industry observers.