eBay has partnered with the Mozilla Foundation to offer a new browser extension that could bring retailers more traffic.
The Firefox Companion for eBay entered an alpha test phase, inviting help from "experienced eBay users".
The Companion is the first project to bear fruit from a closer working relationship announced by the pair in March.
The two companies will work together on browser technology to be rolled out initially in the UK, Germany and France.
"We're still testing and improving the Firefox Companion for eBay, but we want quality feedback from eBay members who enjoy an interesting challenge," the official site reads. "We’re slowly adding people to our alpha test group every day."
As yet unseen, the Companion is believed to be a browser extension that ties the auction site more closely in with the open source browser.
That could mean many more visitors for eBay merchants.
Google has already benefited to the tune of millions of additional search queries thanks to a deal that makes the search site the primary search tool available inside the Firefox window, going to show that, far from being mere on-ramps to the web, browser application code itself still has a considerable part to play in the online economy.
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12:26AM on 29th April 2007
My eBay Fox: a customized version of Firefox to help eBay users
My eBay Fox is a customized version of Firefox that helps people use eBay more effectively. It includes an eBay Toolbar for Firefox, which gives users easy access to all of the important parts of eBay and a handy set of tools like price comparison, consumer reviews, and shipping information.
The coolest part, though, is that when you do a search in eBay, the Toolbar will go out and find preview images for all the items that don't have them, so every item in the list of results will have a preview next to it, even if the seller didn't pay for one.
One of the biggest advantages of Firefox is how flexible and customizable it is with Firefox Add-ons. Unfortunately, for most people, finding and installing add-ons is just too much of a pain. So we decided to remove that process and offer people Firefox installations which have been customized for the way they use the internet.
My eBay Fox is the first of what will become a suite of customized Firefox installations. Right now we are thinking about what the next group will be, possibly social networking sites, other shopping sites, craigslist, etc.
10:56PM on 12th May 2007
This is good news for me because I primarily use firefox for my browsing. Having ebay integration with firefox is awesome.
9:35AM on 11th March 2010
You might also want to check out http://foxybay.com, i find FB works better and I can search in a specific price range. thanks.