By Ian Williams
29 August 2008, 11:26 AM

MICROSOFT IS SET to acquire Greenfield Online, including its European price comparison subsidiary site Ciao, for $17.50 per share, totalling around $486 million in cash. The Vole is only really interested in the Ciao site, which it wants to use to further extend its search and e-commerce services in Europe by integrating into the Live Search platform.

According to Comscore, Ciao gets around 26.5 million unique visitors per month across seven countries, and gets up-to-date price information from thousands of online merchants. The site also has found five million user reviews. "Integrating Ciao's capabilities into Live Search will provide a strong launchpad for our commercial search offer in Europe and enhance our e-commerce offering on MSN," said John Mangelaars, vice president of Consumer and Online for Microsoft in EMEA.

Because Redmond is only after Ciao, it has found an unnamed financial buyer for Greenfield Online's Internet survey parts. Assuming all the regulatory and customary conditions are met, both transactions are expected to be done and dusted before the end of the year.