Rakuten Buys PriceMinister For 200 Million Euro; Rubicon Repositions Itself In Real-Time

Japanese ecommerce behemoth, Rakuten, has acquired French-based PriceMinister.com for 200 million euro. PriceMinister is the number one ecommerce site in France with over 12 million registered users. This deal comes on the back of the purchase of Buy.com for about $250 million. Rakuten is looking to push into other markets and is happy to open the cheque book to buy its way into Euroepan and US markets. The company has made it known that they are looking to build out a global e-comerce network where buyers can attain goods wherever it's available on its network of ecommerce sites. [Business Insider]

Here's what one Rakuten exec would ultimately like to be able to offer its users:

In the future, we want to make it possible for a customer in Japan to pick up, for example, Italian wine directly from our European site, while another customer in Thailand shops for antiques in the Chinese mall.

Interesting post on Rubicon's new positioning by Paidcontent's David Kaplan. There is now going to more emphasis on real-time with more the company looking to hire more product engineers to bolster its RTB offering. Other interesting snippets, include: the company hitting a hundred million dollars in revenue; JT Batson moving on to lucrative publisher exec role; and more sales satff for UK. [Paidcontent]