A post on the Yahoo Developer Blog explained, "[W]e have decided to enter into a strategic partnership with PriceGrabber to power the Product Submit functionality of Yahoo! Shopping as of March 11, 2010.  As a result of these changes, Yahoo! will no longer provide the Shopping Web Services API, including Shopping Results (the ‘Yahoo! Shopping Syndication Services’) to you . . ."

Not all developers are taking the news well, and considering that Yahoo and PriceGrabber haven’t offered anything in the way of free alternatives, it’s a little hard to blame them.  Yahoo might hurt itself with this move, too, since less interest from developers could equate to less attention for Yahoo Shopping.

Still, Yahoo’s accounting department surely had a say in this decision, and it’s hard to imagine that traffic statistics weren’t taken into account.  So this may help Yahoo save a significant amount of money while also allowing it to make a new corporate friend.

For what it’s worth, Yahoo also told developers, "It has been our privilege to provide you with Yahoo!’s shopping syndication product, and we hope to continue our relationship with you in other areas long into the future."

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"Combining enhanced security information with price, user ratings, and merchant reviews helps online shoppers make more informed and trusted buying decisions," said Joe Lazarus, Director of Marketing for Yahoo! Shopping.

"With the Hacker Safe trustmark included in Yahoo! Shopping listings, consumers can easily identify retailers that have taken additional steps to safeguard customer data."

Industry research has shown that security is one of three factors consumers consider before making a purchase. Besides pricing and product availability, security concerns heavily influence online decisions from using a shopping engine to find products or directly going to a retailer’s site. For many shoppers trust is more important than pricing when it comes to making a purchasing decision.

"Our testing in the past two years has consistently shown that visitors react very positively to the Hacker Safe trustmark on our site," said Jay Greenberg, Ecommerce Marketing Manager, Franklin Electronic Publishers.

"Now that we’re able to promote our certified security to consumers as they use shopping engines to find products, we’re looking forward to standing out more in the crowd, generating more shopping clicks, and delivering an even higher boost to our bottom line."