Who Invented E-bay?
EBay was created by Pierre Omidyar, a French-born Iranian who later migrated to the United States, in September, 1995. EBay is a multinational online auction website which employs over 15000 people from around the world and whose revenue crossed $8 billion in 2009.
The first object sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer. It was sold for $14.83. eBay is an abbreviation of the term Echo Bay, another firm of Pierre Omidyar. Echo Bay is a consultant firm. In the early days, eBay was not primarily an auction website. The idea of selling objects came up later and the whole website was devoted to auction only when it started getting popular.
Soon, Omidyar had to hire employees to keep up with the tasks which were increasing with the popularity of the website. EBay went public 1998 and it is said that Omidyar immediately became a billionaire. He hired Meg Whitman, an experienced CEO, to head the company. Under her leadership the company grew very fast. It acquired Pay Pal, Skype, Bill Me Later, Half.com and currently holds more than a quarter of the shares in companies like Craiglist. John Donahoe is the current president of the company.
EBay is a buy and sell website which operates entirely online. There are no physical eBay stores. It is free for anyone wishing to make purchases but the sellers have to pay some amount to the company when their things are listed on eBay and again when their objects are sold. To make any transaction, an account has to be made. One of the major benefits of using eBay is that it eliminates the need to hire unreliable middlemen; although, eBay, in part, also functions like a middleman!
Category: Internet, Inventions, Technology