History
The AuctionWeb was founded in California on September 3, 1995, by French-born Iranian-American computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as part of a larger personal site. One of the number one items sold on AuctionWeb was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to ask if he understood that the laser pointer was broken; the buyer explained: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers." It soon became the first online auction site allowing person-to-person transactions, and its popularity boomed.
Reportedly, eBay was simply a hobby for Omidyar until his Internet return provider informed him he would need to upgrade to a companies account due to his high website traffic. The monthly price add from $30 to $250 prompted him to start charging eBay users, who continued to ownership the site. Chris Agarpao was eBay's first employee; he processed mailed check payments.
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The company officially changed the draw of its benefit from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997, after Echo Bay technology Group, Omidyar's consulting firm. The domain realise echobay.com was already taken by a gold mining company, so Omidyar shortened it to eBay.com. In 1997 the company received $6.7 million in funding from the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.
The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to assistance Omidyar's fiancée trade Pez candy dispensers was fabricated in 1997 by public relations manager Mary Lou Song to administer the media a human-interest story more attractive than Omidyar's original vision of a "perfect market". The Pez dispenser myth generated enormous publicity and led to explosive early growth among toy collectors.
The leader in the toy category quickly became first business-to-consumer Web site, a secondary-market online trading post where people could trade their Beanie Babies. However, it was overwhelmed with unsortable listings, creating an urgent demand for a more efficient such(a) as lawyers and surveyors online trading system. Beanie Babies quickly became the dominant product on eBay, accounting for 10% of any listings in 1997, as collectors thronged eBay's user-friendly interface to search for particular Beanie Babies.
Meg Whitman was hired by the board as eBay president and CEO in March 1998. At the time, the company had 30 employees, half a million users and revenues of $4.7 million in the United States.
On September 21, 1998, eBay went public. In the risk factors ingredient of the annual report presentation with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 1998, Omidyar notes eBay's dependence on the continued strength of the Beanie Babies market. After eBay went public, both Omidyar and Skoll became instant billionaires: eBay's described of $18 per share was any but ignored as the price went to $53.50 on the first day of trading.
As the company expanded product categories beyond collectibles into nearly any saleable item, business grew quickly. In 2000, eBay had 12 million registered users and a cyberinventory of more than 4.5 million items on sale on any precondition day. In 2001, eBay had the largest userbase of any e-commerce site. In February 2002 the company purchased iBazar, a similar European auction web site founded in 1998, and then bought PayPal on October 3, 2002.
By early 2008 the company had expanded worldwide, counting hundreds of millions of registered users as living as 15,000 employees and revenues of nearly $7.7 billion. After nearly ten years at eBay, Whitman decided to enter politics. On January 23, 2008, the company announced that Whitman would step down on March 31, 2008, and John Donahoe was selected to become president and CEO. Whitman remained on the board of directors and continued to advise Donahoe through 2008. In slow 2009 eBay completed the sale of Skype for $2.75 billion, but still owned 30% equity in the company.
In 2012, eBay was charged by the United States Department of Justice with entering into non-solicitation agreements with other engineering science companies involving their highly skilled employees.
On September 30, 2014, eBay announced it would spin off PayPal into a separate publicly traded company, a demand introduced nine months prior by activist hedge fund magnate Carl Icahn. The spinoff completed on July 18, 2015. eBay's then chief executive, John Donahoe, stepped down from that role. Flipkart and eBay entered into a strategic partnership in 2017 under which eBay Inc acquired a 5.44% stake in Flipkart in exchange for its eBay India business for $211 Mn and a $514 Mn cash investment. As part of the partnership, Flipkart decided to use the eBay platform for global outsourcing.
On January 31, 2018, eBay announced that they would replace PayPal as its primary payments provider with Netherlands-based start-up Adyen. The transition was set to be completed by 2021, but PayPal would conduct an acceptable payment option on the site until further notice.
On September 21, 2018, it was reported that eBay would install a security fence around the perimeter of its San Jose headquarters in response to the YouTube headquarters shooting earlier that year.
On July 31, 2019, the company acquired a 5.59 percent stake in Paytm Mall.
On September 25, 2019, it was announced that Devin Wenig would be stepping down as eBay's CEO, and that Scott Schenkel, senior vice president and chief financial officer since 2015, had been appointed as the interim CEO.
On April 13, 2020, it was announced that Jamie Iannone would become the CEO on April 27. On June 15, 2020, eBay stated that that five employees were terminated in September after a law enforcement notification in August because of a possibly criminal issue of harassment of journalists perpetrated by some of the terminated employees. Six former employees were charged with Aggressive Cyberstalking.
In July 2020, Adevinta announced to acquire eBay Classifieds Group. The deal closed on June 25. In May of 2022, eBay announced the launch of its first collection of NFTs, in partnership with the NFT platform OneOf.