eBay acquires all of Magento and launches X.Commerce

eBay have announced the acquisition of all outstanding shares of Magento, who they already held 49% of.

Magento is a professional open-source ecommerce solution that offers retailers complete flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of their online store. As it’s open-source developers can add functionality and tailor the software for a retailers specific requirements. This enables them to add in every business process and flow required to integrate into existing back end accounts and inventory management solutions.

eBay intends to add Magento (along with GSI who they are also in the process of acquiring) to X.Commerce, eBay’s newly created integrated open commerce platform group. X.Commerce is focused on building a developer community as a resource for merchants and retailers of all sizes. More details will be shared during the X.Commerce developers conference on the 12-13th October in San Francisco.

X.Commerce lives at x.com which was formerly know as the PayPal Developer community. eBay are now combining the eBay, PayPal and Magento developer communities into X.Commerce, a cloud-based platform open source environment offering all the the fundamental technologies needed for commerce – shopping carts, payment services, inventory management, marketplace integration and SEO.

I’ve already heard from developers who are waiting to see which way the wind blows in eBay’s growing arsenal of ecommerce platforms. GSI have two platforms, Magento could change direction under eBay’s ownership and of course eBay Prostores is well past it’s sell by date and needs a complete overhaul or simply replacing. Knowing which platform to integrate and develop with is proving a bit of a head ache and we probably won’t know the future direction for any of them until the X.Commerce conference in October.