The History of eBayIn 1995, in San Jose, CA, 28-year-old Pierre Omidyar was a software developer who created a webpage called Auction Web. It was part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar’s personal tribute to the Ebola virus. The history of eBay begins with the listing of a single item on this webpage, a broken laser pointer. Omidyar listed the item as a test, and to his surprise, it sold for $14.83, which was more than the cost of a new one at the time. He called the buyer to make sure he understood that the laser pointer was broken, and the buyer claimed to be a collector of broken laser pointers. One mans junk is another man’s treasure. Omidyar suspected he was onto something big. The small fee he collected for each sale was reinvested to allow for expansion. A Feedback Forum was added, allowing buyers and sellers to rate each other. eBay is short for Echo Bay, which was the name of Omidyar’s consulting firm at the time. He had attempted to register the domain “EchoBay.com”, but found that it was taken, so he shortened the name to eBay. In 1996, eBay hired Jeff Skoll, a Stanford MBA. He became eBay’s second employee and first president. He wrote the business plan that brought eBay from a startup to a great success. By 1998, eBay went public and both Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll became instant billionaires. The company’s name was changed to eBay in 1997. By then eBay was hosting over 800,000 auctions a day, and by 1998, it had over a million registered users. The history of eBay leads up to the fact that eBay is the fastest growing company of all time. It is estimated that over 3000 new users find their way to eBay on a daily basis. Over 700,000 Americans report eBay as their primary or secondary source of income. There are now over 200 million registered users worldwide. People spend more time on eBay than on any other online site.
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