eBay has revealed that it made a substantial investment in ecommerce software provider Magento one year ago.

Magento is an open-source solution and the world's fastest-growing ecommerce platform. It is used by 90,000 merchants, has 3,500 third-party extensions, and has had 2.5 million downloads. Enterprise customers include Nokia, The North Face, Olympus, Adidas, Ford and Samsung.

eBay already owns hosted webstore company ProStores, acquired in 2004, and a direct competitor to Magento's new "Magento Go" hosted service.