by Augusto Na

Created on: March 18, 2009

HOW DID eBAY START?

eBay is one of the biggest Internet sites in the world, and the biggest auction site in the world, with millions of users and tens of millions of page hits. But even the biggest company had to start somewhere. Ebay was founded by the Iranian computer programmer Pierre Omidyar on September 3, 1995. It started in San Jose, California, where it was known as AuctionWeb. However, AuctionWeb acted as more than just an auction website back then. It had many different parts, including a quirky homage to the Ebola virus.

In 1996, Omidyar hired Chris Agarpao to help him run the website, and Jeffrey Skoll to be president. In 1997, Omidyar received $5 million from the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital. The money allowed Omidyar to expand the auction side of AuctionWeb. Omidyar's consulting firm, Echo Bay Technology Group, owned AuctionWeb, and in 1997, he wanted to change the name of the website from AuctionWeb to Echo Bay. However, the domain name echobay.com was already taken by a gold mining company called Echo Bay Mines. Omidyar had to settle for his second choice, eBay.com. The first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer, to a collector of broken laser pointers. The company continued to flourish, becoming an easy way for people to sell and buy used goods. Soon, new and collector's items were being sold on eBay, attracting millions who were looking to either make money selling, or to save money buying.

On September 21, 1998, Omidyar and Skoll took the company public, making billions of dollars from stock sales. Since going public, Omidyar has ceased regulating day-to-day operations, leaving it to CEO John Donahoe. eBay has become a multinational corporation, expanding to thirty other countries, from Austria and Italy to New Zealand and South Korea. However, not all of eBay's ventures have been succesful. An attempt to expand to China in 2003 ended quietly after the site failed to catch the attention of the Chinese public.

eBay has also acquired other websites, such as PayPal (an e-commerce website), Skype (software that allows users to make computer-to-computer calls), StubHub (an auction site for tickets), and Kijiji (a site for classified ads). In 2008, eBay posted $8.46 billions in revenue. As of 2008, eBay had 15,500 employees operating all over the world. eBay went from being a small part of an unknown website to a global juggernaut, spanning continents, and linking millions of buyers and sellers.

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