Earlier today, we reported that Cudo and Buyii were involved in a legal stoush over how Buyii linked to Cudo’s daily group deals. That dispute hasn’t been resolved yet, but Cudo CEO Billy Tucker says that despite the battle, Cudo isn’t opposed to aggregators or linking sites in principle.
While Cudo’s letter to Buyii asked it to stop all linking activity, Tucker told Lifehacker that his main issue with Buyii was the fact that it linked to deals using iframe tags which kept Cudo framed within the Buyii site; didn’t update information if deal offers changed; and highlighted Cudo ahead of other sites it aggregates in its SEO tagging, potentially creating the impression that it was affiliated with Cudo; and didn’t respond to phone calls and emails seeking to discuss those issues. “If you’ve got this business which is effectively leveraging your brand, at some point you’ve got to respond,” he said.
Tucker said that Cudo did not have the same problems with AllTheDeals, and indeed had given it access to a specialised feed of its offers. “As of today, we are fairly happy with AllTheDeals, and we have found them to be responsive and professional.” Cudo also has a deal to share information with catalogue aggregator Lasoo.
Given the large number of deal sites in the market, Tucker said that it was quite likely aggregators would take on a more important role in helping consumers locate the best deals. “We want to make sure that as aggregation sites become more powerful over time that we have a modicum of control over what appears on them. In this market, growing at this incredible pace with the level of fragmentation, there will be some hell of a consolidation, or aggregators will take power.”
There’s already lots of aggregation sites around, as we highlighted in a recent roundup, and since assembling that table we’ve become aware of a few more. So whatever the outcome of this particular stoush, arguments are likely to rage for a while.
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