eBay
eBay Inc.
Type
Public (NASDAQ: EBAY)
Founded
September 3, 1995
Headquarters San Jose, California, United States
Key people
Pierre Omidyar, Founder and
Chairman
John Donahoe, CEO
Lorrie Norrington, President of
eBay Marketplaces
Industry
Auctions
Products
Online auction hosting, Electronic
commerce, Shopping mall
PayPal, Skype, Gumtree, Kijiji,
Revenue
▲$8.46 billion USD (2008)
Net income
▼$348 million USD (2008)[1]
Employees
15,500 (Q1 2008)
Slogan
What ever it is, you can get it on
eBay., and Shop victoriously!
Website
www.ebay.com
List of domain names
Type of site
Online auction
Registration
Required to buy and sell
Available in
Multilingual
Screenshot
The eBay homepage.
eBay headquarters in San Jose
Countries for which eBay is localized.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
eBay
1
eBay North First Street satellite office cam-
pus (home to PayPal)
eBay Inc. is an American Internet company
that manages eBay.com, an online auction
and shopping website in which people and
businesses buy and sell a broad variety goods
and services worldwide. A majority of the
sales take place through a set-time auction
format, but subsequent methods include a
substantial segment of listings in the "Buy It
Now" category. In addition to its original U.S.
website, eBay has established localized web-
sites in thirty other countries. eBay Inc. also
owns PayPal, Skype,[2] StubHub, Kijiji, and
other businesses.
Origins and early history
The online auction website was founded as
AuctionWeb in San Jose, California, on
September 3, 1995, by French-born Iranian
computer programmer Pierre Omidyar [3] as
part of a larger personal site that included,
among other things, Omidyar’s own tongue-
in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.[4] In
1997, the company received approximately
$5 million in funding from the venture capital
firm Benchmark Capital.[5]
The very first item sold on eBay 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. In his respondin