Here’s the summary of my quick call with Chris Jolley at MSN Shopping…

Background…
The consumer wants to see a broad selection of products from a wide variety of merchants. Partnering with PriceGrabber and Shopping.com allows us to provide this service. Oftentimes it doesn’t really matter to the consumer if the product is from PriceGrabber, Shopping.com or direct (MSN Shopping partnership).

The consumer will not be able to tell the difference between the data feeds. We believe that Shopping.com and PriceGrabber are both leaders in the online shopping space. We’re all about hooking up the right customers with the right merchants. It’s a huge benefit to consumers to connect both of their merchant bases and partners and it adds a lot to the overall MSN Shopping experience.

If you’re looking for comprehensiveness, what about crawling sites…
Providing a broad selection is where we’re heading. There are a lot of advantages to working with Shopping.com and PriceGrabber. They are well established leaders with a lot of high quality merchants. It’s easier from a tech standpoint to bring Shopping.com and PriceGrabber together [on MSN Shopping]. With crawling, there are a lot more variables dealing with disparate sites. This means higer maintenance costs.

Is there any place on MSN Shopping that is distinctly Shopping.com or distinctly PriceGrabber…
Pricegrabber ratings have been brought into the site. We don’t have Epinions ratings.