Omidyar第一件販賣的物品是一只壞掉的雷射指示器,以14.83元成交。他驚訝地詢問得標(biāo)者:“您難道不知道這玩意壞了嗎?”Omidyar接到了以下的回復(fù)信:“我是個專門收集壞掉的雷射指示器玩家。”
杰夫史科爾(Jeff Skoll)在1996年被聘雇為該公司首任總裁及全職員工。1997年9月該公司正式更名為ebay。起初該網(wǎng)站屬于Omidyar的顧問公司Echo Bay Technology Group。Omidyar曾經(jīng)嘗試注冊一個EchoBay的網(wǎng)址,卻發(fā)現(xiàn)該網(wǎng)址已被Echo Bay礦業(yè)注冊了,所以他將EchoBay改成他的第二備案:Ebay。
1997年Omidyar開始為eBay物色CEO,看中哈佛MBA出身、并先后在寶潔、迪斯尼擔(dān)任過副總裁的梅格·惠特曼?;萏芈捎趶奈绰犝f過eBay而拒絕加盟,后經(jīng)職業(yè)獵頭貝尼爾的軟磨硬泡同意,并把eBay帶向今天的輝煌。
如今eBay已有1.471億注冊用戶,有來自全球29個國家的賣家,每天都有涉及幾千個分類的幾百萬件商品銷售,成為世界上最大的電子集市。2003年交易額為238億美元,凈收入22億美元。
2015年4月10日,PayPal從eBay分拆,協(xié)議規(guī)定,eBay在5年內(nèi)不得推出支付服務(wù),而PayPal則不能為實體產(chǎn)品開發(fā)自主的在線交易平臺。
eBay Inc. is the world’s leading e-commerce company. It was founded as an online auction site in 1995 called AuctionWeb by Pierre Omidyar. He said: “What I wanted to do was create an efficient market, where regular people could compete with big business…It was a little bit of an experiment.” He changed the name in 1997 to be similar to his company Echo Bay Technology Group. Within two years of starting, the company hosted 2,000,000 auctions. The company website explains the success story to date: “With more than 90 million active users globally, eBay is the world's largest online marketplace, where practically anyone can buy and sell practically anything…In 2009, the total worth of goods sold on eBay was $60 billion -- $2,000 every second.” The company employs over 15,000 people throughout the world.