Home Depot has always been in the business of providing services to its customers. There's carpet installations, kitchen cabinet and countertop installation, plumbing, AC, electrical and more. But today, the home improvement warehouse chain announced that it acquired Redbeacon, a website-based company that connects consumers with contractors for their home maintenance, repair and remodeling needs.

RedBeacon lets users submit job requests for contractors in almost any local service category, and then forwards these requests to relevant participating service providers, who are invited to submit bids for the job and an appointment time at which they can complete it. For the consumer, the service is free. As soon as the user selects an appointment, the service-provider is charged a 10% commission by Redbeacon. The provider performs the service and charges the user directly. It's sort of an Angie's list, but not as popular (yet), having just started in 2009.

Redbeacon.com vs. Angie's List or Yelp
With Yelp and Angie's List, a person has to get a list of service providers and has to make individual calls to each one. You've still got a lot of work to do. Redbeacon filters down that list and brings quotes to its users. For example, if someone is looking to install a new bathroom sink, they can put in their parameters - how much they'd pay, whether or not they already have the sink, etc. - into Redbeacon and  receive a list of quotes from prospective service providers.

According to the announcement, Redbeacon's leadership team will stay in place and the company will continue to operate out of San Mateo, CA. Redbeacon.com is designed to present consumers with contractors that are pre-researched ("presearched"?) and verified. They are attempting to take out the hassle of price comparisons as well, and the whole system even uses a proprietary algorithm that incorporates the consumer's own Facebook social graph (if applicable) in order to recommend professionals. Redbeacon.com was actually founded by some Google veterans and took the top prize at the TechCrunch50 Conference in September 2009.

Not available for all markets just yet, Redbeacon can provide contractors for consumers living in the Atlanta, the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Seattle, Houston, Boston, Denver and Portland markets.