What this article doesn't mention is that Rakuten is the #7 site in Japan and one of the top 100 sites in the world. They bought buy.com and are consolidating brands. Although the name "Rakuten" isn't well-known to people in the U.S., given the brand they've built up in Japan, it's a perfectly rational decision to choose "Rakuten" as the umbrella name. It would be like eBay buying "auctions.com".