Announced today, eBay, Inc. will acquire Magento, a popular (and highly reputable) ecommerce platform. Magento was founded several years ago and has grown from a basic open source platform to an industry leader. eBay is planning to use Magento to create a new open commerce platform, called “X.Commerce”.

The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of this year, and fully integrated in October. Announced in February, eBay had acquired a 49% stake in Magento, an investment worth $22.5 million. With the recent selling of their Skype SARL acquisition for $2.4 billion, eBay has a lot of money sitting on the sideline, which they said will be used for “acquisitions”.

Magento will now be used as a further enhanced ecommerce platform (X.Commerce) that will allow eBay to provide additional services for merchants, beyond the ones that they already offer including point of sale (POS) systems, and credit card services.

In an email to all subscribers of Magento, Co-Founder and CEO Roy Rubin, stated that “Why is this acquisition so exciting for all of us? eBay is evolving to become a strategic commerce partner focused on delivering new ways for merchants of all sizes to drive innovation. As a centerpiece of this strategy, they are building a global, open commerce platform that leverages the worldwide developer community. And Magento will be at the core of this new, open commerce platform, called "X.Commerce."

WebiMax utilizes Magento in their ecommerce solutions. “These platforms are SEO friendly, by design”, states Sean O’Donnell, Vice President of Marketing. “Magento also has open source code that we are able to custom develop, so that we can customize and integrates with other platforms that are being used by our clients.

It is unclear as of now whether or not Magento will have its reach to small businesses that utilize it. Also, what will it look like going forward?

eBay is expected to release further details in October (2011) during the X.Commerce conference.