I have been at Capital IT (Paris, France) this afternoon which is a 2 days meeting between high tech entrepreneurs and VCs. I have heard Denis Payre keynote (ex Business Object's founder and actual head of Kiala) talking about the long tail in european e-commerce industry (see also the Wired article about it). I am happy to see that european e-tailers have faced the US "very challenging" competition.
Then Yahoo Europe General Manager (Dominique Vidal) talked about Yahoo's acquisition of Kelkoo. He said one of the reason Yahoo bought european Kelkoo is its global presence in Europe and not the technology (shopbot). Obviously, the european market is more complex than the US one, especially for US companies with pan-european expansion plans.