eBay acquires price comparison engine Decide; will shut its services down by month's end

Credit where it's due: eBay recognized that the online auction train wouldn't keep chugging along at a breakneck rate, so it's snapping up complementary companies in order to better bolster its portfolio. A few years, PayPal; today, Decide. The three-year old company was engineered to give overwhelmed consumers a way to more easily see what products were worthwhile and which weren't -- from there, it helped to find the best deal, completing the process. (In the effort of full disclosure, gdgt -- now under the same umbrella as Engadget -- competed with Decide and was acquired in February of this year.)

eBay's evidently hoping that Decide's predictive analytics will "help over 25 million eBay sellers make smarter decisions and be more successful," while the Decide team will be headed to eBay's Seattle offices. As these things tend to go, Decide's services, website and mobile apps will no longer be available after September 30th, which is pretty awful news for those of you who dug it. For those curious, paying members will be reimbursed for their subscriptions, but you're on your own for any tissues required to sop up the tears.