Discovering The History Of Ebay
Online auctions are a great way to obtain rare or expensive items for a cheaper price than you would normally have to pay
. You must be careful when you are participating in these auctions as many of the founders are fraudsters who are trying to trick you out of your money.
However, one of the first generally reliable online auction sites to gain popularity of eBay. eBay is a American company that is an online auction site and provides shopping services.
This site is used all over the world for a wide number of goods and services. This company was founded in 1995 after the internet gained popularity.
Originally it only features a "set-time" auction format, but it quickly expanded to include "Buy It Now" shopping opportunities. Today, many also vie for the privilege to have an advertisement on specific areas of their site.
The location of the eBay headquarters is in San Jose, California. Originally, this site was called 'AuctionWeb.'
It was created by a computer programmer named Pierre Omidyar who considered himself to be a French born Iranian. One of the first things this site sold was a broken laser pointer.
It was sold for $14.83. Omidyar was surprised that someone had want the broken laser pointer.
He even called the winning bidder to ask whether or not he knew that the pointer had been broken before he had purchased it. The winning bidder replied that he was a collector of broken laser pointers and that he had known it was broken before he bought it.
By the first birthday of the company in 1996, it was time to hire a president and an employee. The first employee was Chris Agarpao and the first president was named Jeffrey Skoll.
In November, eBay made its first contract with a third-party to sell plane tickets and travel products. The company that the contract was made with was called the Electronic Travel Auction and it instituted SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets.
Soon after this, business expanded exponentially. By January of 1997, eBay had conducted over 2,000,000 auctions. The previous year they had only conducted 250,000 auctions in 1996.
The officials finally decided to change the name from AuctionWeb to eBay in September. In the beginning the site had been a part of the Echo Bay Technology Group.
The Echo Bay Technology Group was the consulting firm of Omidyar. When he tried to register it under echobay.com, he found that the URL was already taken.
As a result he shortened it to simply eBay.com. In 1997 eBay also collected $6.7 million in capital from Benchmark Capital.
In 1998, eBay decided to hire Meg Whitman as the president and CEO. It had also grown to employ 30 people, serve 500,000 people, and bring in $4.7 million per year only from the United States.
When the site finally went public on September 21, 1998, the site gained even more visitors. As you can imagine, Omidyar and Skoll both instantly became billionaires.
They had intended the target share price to be $18. However, the share price automatically jumped to $53.10.
Their success continued to grow as they continued to expand their business. In 2002, eBay bought out IBazar.
IBazar was the European equivalent of eBay. It is interesting to note that this company was also founded in 1995.
In addition, eBay also bought out PayPal on October 14, 2002. By 2008, this auction site had become by far the most successful with transactions occurring worldwide between hundreds of millions of users.
At this time, eBay boasted of over 15,000 employees and their revenues reached $7.7 billion. Whitman had been the company president for ten years around this time, but he decided to pass the role onto someone else as fostered a desire to pursue politics.
It was soon announced that John Donahoe would take his place as the President and CEO. Whitman continued to give advice to the new CEO by continuing to be a part of the Board of Directors until 2009.
During this year, eBay sold their internet communication sight called Skype for $2.75 Billion while retaining 30 percent in equity. The company continued to grow.
Today, you can find anything you need on eBay. You can find collectibles, decor, appliances, computer, books, furnishing, equipment, vehicles, music, and various other items of interest.
It has become the ideal communication tool between sellers and buyers. It allows items to end up where they are wanted and used instead of sitting on a shelf collecting dust.
by: Tommy Greene
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