Lars Hard's ExpertMaker seeks to put artificial intelligence in the hands of developers. Entrepreneur Lars Hard feels he has seen the future of search, information gathering and the web in general, and it is artificial intelligence. Computational intelligence, to put it more succinctly: the ability to gather information or find your destination on the web faster and more efficiently with an artificial search partner that can predict what you want. The number of search engines, the myriad pathways from a user's inquisitive mind to the answer he or she seeks requires that someone, or some thing, must learn the complexities of people's search patterns in order to better serve the searcher. "Everything on the internet will have to get more intelligent," said Hard. "Siri is a very good example of what we're going to see more of in the future," said Hard, who has set up his own company, ExpertMaker, to develop software for artificial intelligence.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "E-Commerce Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. The acquisition is part of the e-commerce company's structured data push for sellers. Structured data is eBay's standard way of categorizing and displaying products for sale on its marketplace. Utilizing SalesPredict's data analysis and machine learning skills, eBay will be able to better refine its search functions in order to serve the right products to prospective shoppers.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "E-Commerce Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. The acquisition is part of the e-commerce company's structured data push for sellers. Structured data is eBay's standard way of categorizing and displaying products for sale on its marketplace. Utilizing SalesPredict's data analysis and machine learning skills, eBay will be able to better refine its search functions in order to serve the right products to prospective shoppers.

Today eBay announced it will acquire SalesPredict, an Israel-based company that leverages advanced analytics to predict customer buying behavior and sales conversion. SalesPredict is eBay's latest acquisition that will support its artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science efforts. It follows eBay's recent acquisition of Expertmaker, in order to further bolster our structured data efforts. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Upon the close of the transaction, a number of SalesPredict's employees will join eBay's structured data organization, working from eBay's Israeli Development Center in Netanya.

Today eBay announced it will acquire SalesPredict, an Israel-based company that leverages advanced analytics to predict customer buying behavior and sales conversion. SalesPredict is eBay's latest acquisition that will support its artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science efforts. It follows eBay's recent acquisition of Expertmaker, in order to further bolster our structured data efforts. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Upon the close of the transaction, a number of SalesPredict's employees will join eBay's structured data organization, working from eBay's Israeli Development Center in Netanya.

Let's check in with who's on the AI (artificial intelligence) train. Apple kicked things off this year, announcing back in January that it had purchased Emotient, an AI tech startup in the facial recognition business. Did Apple say why it bought that company? Of course, it did not; mind your own business. Jump ahead to spring, and the next big company in the retail space (specifically, the biggest company in eCommerce) to make an AI-related move this year was Amazon.

Artificial intelligence, popularly known as AI is slowly taking over the industry. More and more companies and brands turn to AI to give their customers better service. According to new reports, eBay is also considering AI to improve product searches on their site. According to Forbes, eBay is very aggressive in fulfilling its goal of making its platform simple and more efficient. Their website is a popular buy and sell platform.

As a result, users are forced to wade through pages and pages of listings to find the exact item they're looking for. That could push a lot of customers to rivals like Amazon.com, Inc., which is why eBay has finally done something about it. On Thursday, eBay announced that it's agreed to acquire Swedish software make Expertmaker, which specializes in AI and machine learning systems that can help to analyze and organize massive sets of data. It's just what the doctor ordered for eBay, which hosts an average of 900 million listings at any one time. Expertmaker has actually been working with eBay since 2010, most recently helping out with a "structured data" project aimed at making eBay's site less cluttered than it currently is.

The rap on eBay's website is that it's too messy, forcing users to pick through page after page of listings to find what they really want. Plenty of customers just give up and head to Amazon instead. The good news is that eBay knows this is a problem and is working to fix it. The bad news is that eBay on average hosts 900 million listings -- from new ink cartridges to one-of-a-kind porcelain dolls -- making sorting all this stuff a humongous job. As part of its push to offer up more relevant products to shoppers, eBay on Thursday said it agreed to purchase Sweden-based Expertmaker, a 10-year-old software firm specializing in artificial intelligence and machine learning to help organize and analyze huge sets of data.

The auction site says the acquisition will make it more "product-focused" by using big data to better connect shoppers to more than 900 million listings. Exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, but eBay confirmed that Expertmaker's staff will be joining its structured data product and technology team. Expertmaker has been an eBay partner for some years, helping the site to improve how users discover and purchase new products by working to optimise its database of listings from millions of sellers worldwide. "Expertmaker is excited to join the eBay team, bringing innovative artificial intelligence, machine learning and large-scale optimisation technology to eBay's structured data initiative," said Lars Hard, Founder and CEO of Expertmaker. "In partnership with eBay, we will be able to transcend traditional machine learning approaches to create adaptive and learning solutions using the Expertmaker platform."