WebProNews

A new player in the shopping search engine market gains $7.2 million in additional venture capital.

Become.com wants to be a price comparison destination for online shoppers. A recent round of funding will help them focus on this task, according to a corporate executive.

The company's aim is to build a shopping-specialized search engine. They desire to find results like buying guides, articles, and forums related to a searched-for product.

Other sites, like Shopping.com and NexTag.com, exist in the shopping engine space now. And the big players, Google and Yahoo, have extensive shopping services already. Facing these last two powerhouse companies could prove very difficult.

But the company does have talented experience with its founders, Michael Yang, and Yeogirl Yun, who were also the founders of mySimon.com. Cnet acquired mySimon in February, 2000, for $700 million USD.

Currently, Become.com functions as a typical search engine. A test search for "six person tent" yielded a review of an REI 6-person tent as the top search result. The second and fifth results were links to sites where a 6-person tent could be purchased.

Also, the site displays those ubiquitous Google AdSense ads on the right side of the results page. One link on the test search result page pointed to Become.com competitor Shopping.com.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.