• The Register, Monday, June 4, 2012 10:30 AM

Delving deeper into online commerce, Google has quietly acquired KikScore, a company that assigns scores to e-commerce businesses based on their level of reputation and trustworthiness. “The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, is a Google acquire-and-shutdown special with the service being discontinued from June 28,” The Register reports.

Under the terms of the deal, Google bought KikScore’s service, platform, technology and other assets, but  reportedly has no plans to take on its staff or management. A patent-pending online reputation company, KikScore currently has more than 1,700 small business customers. “It is understood that KikScore’s platform will be intergrated [sic] into the Google Trusted Store product within the Google Checkout/Google Wallet department,” The Register writes.

As its story goes, KikScore was co-founded by CEO Rajeev Malik after detecting the high levels of unfulfilled orders sitting in abandoned shopping carts on his wife’s online store. On the company’s blog, Malik said: “The road from there to today has been filled with great highs, some deep lows, overcoming immense challenges all while dealing with the occasional kicks to the gut that most start-ups typically experience…”

Read the whole story at The Register »