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This article is about the online auction center. For the parody of "I Want It That Way", see eBay (song).
| eBay Inc. | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Public (NASDAQ: EBAY) |
| Founded | San Jose, California, USA (September 3, 1995) |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California, USA |
| Key people | Meg Whitman, CEO & President Pierre Omidyar, Founder and Chairman John Donahoe, Chief of eBay Marketplace |
| Industry | Auctions |
| Products | Online auction hosting, Electronic commerce, Shopping mall PayPal, Skype, Gumtree, Kijiji |
| Revenue | ▲$7.67 billion USD (2007) |
| Employees | 11,600 (Q1 2006) |
| 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 |
| Launched | September 3, 1995 |
|
Screenshot | |
eBay headquarters in San Jose
eBay North First Street satellite office campus (home to PayPal)
Countries for which eBay is localized.
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 goods and services worldwide. In addition to its original U.S. website, eBay has established localized websites in thirty other countries. eBay Inc also owns PayPal, Skype, and other businesses.
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The online auction web site was founded in San Jose, California on September 3, 1995 by French-born Iranian computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb,misc.forsale.non-computer post about Auctionweb part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar\'s own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.Cohen, Adam. The Perfect Store. ISBN 0-316-16493-3.
The very first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder and asked if he understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained: "I\'m a collector of broken laser pointers."How did eBay start?, About.com. Retrieved on 2007-01-26. The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar\'s fiancée trade PEZ Candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media. This was revealed in Adam Cohen\'s 2002 book and confirmed by eBay.
Chris Agarpao was hired as eBay\'s first employee and Jeffrey Skoll was hired as the first president of the company in 1996. In November 1996, eBay entered into its first third-party licensing deal, with a company called Electronic Travel Auction to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products. The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997. Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar\'s consulting firm. Omidyar had tried to register the domain name echobay.com (the domain has recently been put up for sale) but found it already taken by the Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, so he shortened it to his second choice, eBay.com.http://www.happynews.com/living/online/history-ebay.htm
eBay went public on September 21http://moneycentral.hoovers.com/global/msn/factsheet.xhtml?COID=56307, 1998, and both Omidyar and Skoll became instant billionaires. The company purchased PayPal on October 14 2002.
In addition to its original U.S. website, eBay has established localized websites in several other countries:
| Country/region | Website | Language | Launch date |
|---|---|---|---|
 Argentina
| http://www.mercadolibre.com.ar/ | Spanish | 2 august 1999 |
 Australia
| http://www.ebay.com.au/ | English | October 1999eBay Fact Sheet (PDF). eBay. eBay Inc. (2006-03-31). Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
 Austria
| http://www.ebay.at/ | German | 18 December 2000eBay Launches Service for Austria. eBay Inc. - Investor Relations. eBay Inc. (2000-12-18). Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
.svg/58px-Flag of Belgium (civil).svg) Belgium
| http://www.ebay.be/ | Dutch, French | ? |
 Brazil
| http://www.mercadolivre.com.br/ | Portuguese | ? |
 Canada
| http://www.ebay.ca/ | English, French | April 2000Gary Briggs Appointed Vice President and Country Manager of eBay Canada. eBay Canada. eBay Inc. (2004-04-28). Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
 China
| http://www.ebay.com.cn/ | Chinese | ? |
 France
| http://www.ebay.fr/ | French | 5 October 2000WORLD\'S LARGEST ONLINE TRADING COMMUNITY LAUNCHES NEW WEB SITE IN FRANCE(French) eBay France, lancement officiel du site d\'enchères |
 Germany
| http://www.ebay.de/ | German | June 1999 |
 Hong Kong
| http://www.ebay.com.hk/ | Chinese, English | 21 December 2003eBay Launches Service For Hong Kong. eBay Inc. - Investor Relations. eBay Inc. (2003-12-21). Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
 India
| http://www.ebay.in/ | English | ? |
 Ireland
| http://www.ebay.ie/ | English | 29 March 2001eBay Launches Service For Ireland, New Zealand And Switzerland. eBay Inc. - Investor Relations. eBay Inc. (2001-03-29). Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
 Israel
| http://www.ebay.co.il/ | English | ? |
 Italy
| http://www.ebay.it/ | Italian | 15 January 2001eBay Launches in Italy. eBay Inc. - Investor Relations. eBay Inc. (2001-01-15). Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
 Malaysia
| http://www.ebay.com.my/ | English | 1 December 2004eBay Launches Service for Malaysia. eBay Inc. - Investor Relations. eBay Inc. (2004-12-01). Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
 Mexico
| http://www.mercadolibre.com.mx/ | Spanish | ? |
 Netherlands
| http://www.ebay.nl/ | Dutch | ? |
 New Zealand
| http://pages.ebay.com/nz | English | 29 March 2001 |
 Philippines
| http://www.ebay.ph/ | English | 16 November 2004eBay Launches Service for the Philippines. eBay Inc. - Investor Relations. eBay Inc. (2004-11-16). Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
 Poland
| http://www.ebay.pl/ | Polish | 22 April 2005eBay Launches Service for Poland. eBay Inc. - Investor Relations. eBay Inc. (2005-04-22). Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
 Singapore
| http://www.ebay.com.sg/ | English | 24 October 2001eBay Launches Service for Singapore. eBay Inc. - Investor Relations. eBay Inc. (2001-10-24). Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
 South Korea
| http://www.auction.co.kr/ | Korean | 15 February 2001[Internet Auction] Auction "eBay will start Korean service next month". Hangyore News (Yonhab News). (2001-01-08). Retrieved on 2007-11-29. |
 Spain
| http://www.ebay.es/ | Spanish | 8 January 2002eBay.es Dossier de Prensa (PDF). eBay.es. eBay Inc. (January 2001). Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
 Sweden
| http://www.tradera.com/ | Swedish | ? |
 Switzerland
| http://www.ebay.ch/ | German, French | 29 March 2001 |
 Taiwan
| http://www.ruten.com.tw/ | Chinese | ? |
 Turkey
| http://www.gittigidiyor.com/ | Turkish | 3 May 2007 |
 United Kingdom
| http://www.ebay.co.uk/ | English | October 1999eBay Worldwide. eBay.co.uk. eBay Inc.. Retrieved on 2007-11-09. |
 United States
| http://www.ebay.com/ | English | 3 September 1995 |
 Vietnam
| http://www.ebay.vn/ | Vietnamese, English | 27 June 2007Nhịp sống số. |
Millions of collectibles, appliances, computers, furniture, equipment, vehicles, and other miscellaneous items are listed, bought, and sold daily. In 2005, eBay launched its Business & Industrial category, breaking into the industrial surplus business. Some items are rare and valuable, while many others are dusty gizmos that would have been discarded if not for the thousands of eager bidders worldwide. Anything can be sold as long as it is not illegal or does not violate the eBay Prohibited and Restricted Items policy.Prohibited and Restricted Items - Overview. eBay. Retrieved on 2006-06-28. Services and intangibles can be sold, too. Large international companies, such as IBM, sell their newest products and offer services on eBay using competitive auctions and fixed-priced storefronts. Regional searches of the database make shipping slightly faster and cheaper. Separate eBay sites such as eBay US and eBay UK allow the users to trade using the local currency as an additional option to PayPal. Software developers can create applications that integrate with eBay through the eBay API by joining the eBay Developers Program.eBay Developers Program. eBay. Retrieved on 2006-06-28. As of June 2005, there were over 15,000 members in the eBay Developers Program, comprising a broad range of companies creating software applications to support eBay buyers and sellers as well as eBay Affiliates.
Controversy has arisen over certain items put up for bid. For instance, in late 1999 a man offered one of his kidneys for auction on eBay, attempting to profit from the potentially lucrative (and, in the United States, illegal) market for transplantable human organs. On other occasions, people and even entire towns have been listed, often as a joke or to garner free publicity. In general, the company removes auctions that violate its terms of service agreement within a short time after hearing of the auction from an outsider; the company\'s policy is to not pre-approve transactions. eBay is also an easy place for unscrupulous sellers to market counterfeit merchandise, which can be difficult for novice buyers to distinguish without careful studying of the auction description.
eBay\'s Latin American partner is MercadoLibre.
eBay\'s rivals include Amazon.com Marketplace.
Beginning in August, 2007, eBay required listing in "Video Games" and "Health & Beauty" to accept its payment system PayPal and sellers could only accept PayPal for payments in the category "Video Games: Consoles". August 10, 2007, 10:38AM BST post to eBay annoucement board by eBay\'s staff Starting January 10 2007, eBay says sellers can only accept PayPal as payment for the categories "Computing > Software", "Consumer Electronics > MP3 Players", "Wholesale & Job Lots > Mobile & Home Phones", and "Business, Office & Industrial > Industrial Supply / MRO".21 December, 2007 12:10PM GMT General announcement by eBay eBay announced that started in March 2008, eBay had added to this requirement that all sellers with less than 100 feedback must offer PayPal and no merchant account may be used as an alternative.Announcement posted in a section on ebay called Changes in 2008eBay February 2008 announcement board posted on 28 February, 2008 02:49PM GMT
In June of 2006, eBay added an eBay Community Wiki and eBay Blogs to its Community Content which also includes the Discussion Boards, Groups, Answer Center, Chat Rooms, and Reviews & Guides. Ebay has a robust mobile offering, including SMS alerts, a WAP site, and J2ME clients, available in certain markets.
eBay Matchups is a fun website created that allows users to put two items head-to-head and allow visitors to vote on their favorite item.
Best of eBay is a new specialty site to find the most unusual and unique items on the eBay site. Users can also vote on and nominate listings that they find.
eBay Pulse provides information about popular search terms, trends and most watched items.
Holiday Hot List 2007 is a comprehensive list of products that are in demand for the Christmas season.
eBay offers several types of auctions.
For Auction-style listings, the first bid must be at least the amount of the minimum bid set by the seller. Regardless of the amount the first bidder actually bids, until a second bid is made, eBay will then display the auction\'s minimum bid as the current high bid. After the first bid is made, each subsequent bid must be equal to at least the current highest bid displayed plus one bidding increment. The bidding increment is established by eBay based on the size of the current highest displayed bid. For example, when the current highest bid is less than or equal to $0.99, the bidding increment is $0.05; when the current highest bid is at least $1.00 but less than or equal to $4.99, the bidding increment is $0.25. Regardless of the amount each subsequent bidder bids, eBay will display the lesser of the bidder\'s actual bid and the amount equal to the previous highest bidder\'s actual bid plus one bidding increment. For example, suppose the current second-highest bid is $2.05 and the highest bid is $2.40. eBay will display the highest bid as $2.30, which equals the second-highest bid ($2.05) plus the bidding increment ($0.25). In this case, eBay will require the next bid to be at least $2.55, which equals the highest displayed bid ($2.30) plus one bidding increment ($0.25). The next bid will display as the actual amount bid or $2.65, whichever is less. The figure of $2.65 in this case comes from the then-second-highest actual bid of $2.40 plus the bidding increment of $0.25. The winning bidder pays the bid that eBay displays, not the amount actually bid. Following this example, if the next bidder is the final bidder, and bids $2.55, the winner pays $2.55, even though it is less than the second-highest bid ($2.40) plus one bidding increment ($0.25). However, if the next bidder is the final bidder and bids an arbitrarily large amount, for example $10.00 or even more, the winner pays $2.65, which equals the second-highest bid plus one bidding increment.
For Dutch Auctions, which are auctions of two or more identical items sold in one auction, each bidder enters both a bid and the number of items desired. Until the total number of items desired by all bidders equals the total number of items offered, bidders can bid any amount greater than or equal to the minimum bid. Once the total numbers of items desired by all bidders is greater than or equal to the total number offered, each bidder is required to bid one full bidding increment above the currently-displayed winning bid. All winning bidders pay the same lowest winning bid.
eBay has established detailed rules about bidding, retraction of bids, shill bidding (collusion to drive up the price), and other aspects of bidding. These rules can be viewed on the help pages.
In 2007, ebay began using detailed seller ratings of one to five stars on feedback. eBay labels the detailed seller ratings when filling out feedback as 5 being very reasonable and 4 being resonable, however sellers with any detailed ratings of 4.3 and below are penalized and less visible in its search listings and having all 4.5 DSR rating is required to be a power seller, making the rating of 4 as unreasonable.http://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200802.shtmlhttp://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200801.shtmlhttp://pages.ebay.com/services/forum/new.htmlhttp://pages.ebay.com/sell/update08/overview/index.htmlhttp://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200801.shtml
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This section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (November 2007) |
eBay generates revenue from a number of fees. The eBay fee system is quite complex; there are fees to list a product and fees when the product sells, plus several optional fees, all based on various factors and scales. The U.S.-based ebay.com takes $0.20 to $80 per listing and 5.25% or less of the final price (as of 2007). The Mexican ebay "mercado libre" takes 1% (price of the article × number of articles to be sold), and 4.99% of the final price if there is a successful trade. The UK based ebay.co.uk (ebay.co.uk offices) takes from GBP £0.15 to a maximum rate of GBP £3 per £100 for an ordinary listing and from 0.75% to 5.25% of the final price. In addition, eBay now owns the PayPal payment system which has fees of its own.
Under current U.S. law, a state cannot require sellers located outside the state to collect a sales tax, making deals more attractive to buyers. Although state laws require purchasers to pay sales tax to their own states on out-of-state purchases, most non-professional sellers ignore this requirement. However, most sellers that operate as a full time business do follow state tax regulations on their eBay transactions.[citation needed] However for the tax called Value added tax (VAT), eBay requires sellers to include the VAT fees in their listing price and not as an add-on and thus eBay profits by collecting fees based on what governments tax for VAT.eBay January 2008 announcement board. Posted on 30 January, 2008 06:20PM GMT
The company\'s current business strategy includes increasing revenue by increasing international trade within the eBay system. eBay has already expanded to over two dozen countries including China and India. The only places where expansion failed were Taiwan and Japan, where Yahoo! had a head start and also New Zealand where TradeMe, owned by the Fairfax media group is the dominant online auction website.
eBay has its share of controversy, ranging from its privacy policy (eBay typically turns over user information to law enforcement without a subpoena)[citation needed] to well-publicized seller fraud. eBay claims that their data shows that less than .01% of all transactions result in a confirmed case of fraud. However, eBay states that their stated fraud statistic both undercounts and overcounts fraud. Chat with Rob Chesnut, Vice President of eBay\'s Trust & Safety Department
One mechanism eBay uses to combat fraud is its feedback system. Before eBay\'s January 29th, 2008 policy change announcement, at the end of every transaction, both the buyer and seller had the option of rating each other. Both parties had the ability to rate each other and the experience as a "positive", "negative", or "neutral" rating and leave a comment no longer than 80 characters. As of incoming CEO\'s John Donahoe\'s announcement however, the option for sellers to leave anything other than positive feedback to buyers was removed. ebay.com, Home > Community > Feedback Forum > Upcoming Changes to Feedback. BBC, 5-Feb-2008, eBay to ban negative seller views. blog.auctionbytes.com, 29-Jan-2008, Upcoming Changes to Feedback on eBay.
Weaknesses of the feedback system include:eBay Feedback: Fatally Flawed?.San Francisco Bay Guardian - Bias on eBay.
eBay acknowledges weaknesses in its feedback system on its own policy pages, noting several of the above points.eBay.com Feedback Policies - Overview.
When a user feels that a seller or buyer has been dishonest, a dispute can be filed with eBay. An eBay account (whether seller, buyer or both) may be suspended if there are too many complaints against the account holder.
Originally, feedback could be left for a seller or buyer whether or not it involved a transaction and could be left multiple times by the same person. While one upside is it allowed people to offset feedback in case of fortune reversals (as feedback can never be edited or retracted once it is left) and has even allowed people to leave feedback for a seller or buyer simply for answering a question, the downside of this more than offset it as it allowed people to flame others or try to ruin credibility (as every feedback also counted towards one\'s rating, no matter what). Eventually, one could only leave feedback if they won an auction, and only one feedback message could be left per transaction.
EBay allows Mystery Box and Mystery Envelope auctions, however these are almost all fraudulent auctions because the seller can manipulate the box contents to make sure it is never a good deal for the buyer.Scams And Scoundrels Book ISBN-13: 978-0-9774760-2-2 Mystery Envelope auctions offer cash prizes of an undisclosed amount to auction winners. The auction winner usually receives from 10% to 30% of the money they paid for the auction back in \'winnings\'.Scams And Scoundrels Book ISBN-13: 978-0-9774760-2-2 Chapter 8 Mystery Envelope auctions are considered by many to be illegal lotteries.[citation needed] This was also the case with auctions for "repackaging" of collectible card game cards (such as Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon) with the promise that one of the repackages has an expensive rare card.[citation needed]
Professional scammers target new members to take advantage of their unfamiliarity with how eBay or PayPal work.PayPal-Scam.com. New members can be easily tricked into thinking there is a special website they should make payments through (which is in fact a fake site setup by a scammer) or they may be tricked more easily into using a fake escrow company.
Many complaints have been made about eBay\'s system of dealing with fraud, leading to its being featured on the British consumer rights television program Watchdog. It is also regularly featured in The Daily Mirror\'s Consumer Awareness page. The complaints are generally that eBay sometimes fails to respond when a claim is made. Since eBay makes its money on commissions from listings and sales, it may not be in eBay\'s interest to take action against large sellers.[citation needed]
Frauds that can be committed by sellers include:
Frauds committed by buyers include:
Combatting fraud:
According to Ofer Elzam from Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd., there is a botnet which steals e-bay accounts. Custom-built botnet steals eBay accounts.. The attacks use such techniques as compromising genuine websites with SQL injection, inserting IFrame code which redirects visitors to other sites which host a Trojan. Trojan-infected computers are used to provide a brute search for login/password pairs, using XML-formatted code to communicate with ebay servers directly.
It is estimated that about a quarter of all ancient coins and about two-thirds of all antiquities sold on eBay are modern forgeries.Counterfeit Coin Detection. Retrieved on 2008-01-21.
Holders of intellectual property rights, have claimed that eBay profits from the infringement of intellectual property rights. eBay has responded by creating the Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) program, which provides to rightsholders expedited auction takedowns and private information on eBay users, but has likewise been criticized.
Other notable controversies involving eBay include:
eBay in its earliest days was essentially unregulated, but as eBay grew, it found it necessary to restrict or forbid auctions for various items. Note that some of the restrictions relate to eBay.com (the US site), while other restrictions apply to specific European sites (such as Nazi paraphernalia). Regional laws and regulations may apply to the seller or the buyer. Among the hundred or so banned or restricted categories:
