50 Fun Facts About EBay

Who founded eBay in September 1995?

The French-born Iranian-American programmer built it as a hobby site to make some extra money.

What was eBay originally called?

It was renamed eBay in September 1997 after Omidyar's consulting firm, Echo Bay Technology Group.

What was the first item ever sold on the site, for $14.83?

Omidyar checked whether the buyer knew it was broken; the man replied that he collected broken laser pointers.

The story that eBay was founded so Omidyar's fiancée could trade Pez dispensers is what?

The tale was fabricated to interest the media and has been repeated ever since.

Why did Omidyar shorten the name from Echo Bay to eBay?

Echo Bay Mines held the domain, so eBay.com it was.

What prompted Omidyar to start charging fees in early 1996?

The site made $1,000 in its first month of fees and $2,500 in the second, more than it cost to run.

What was the job of eBay's first employee, Chris Agarpao?

Fee payments arrived by post in the pre-PayPal days.

Who was hired as eBay's first president in 1996?

The Canadian later founded Participant Media, producer of Spotlight and An Inconvenient Truth, and the Skoll Foundation.

Which toys accounted for about 10% of all eBay listings in 1997?

Omidyar even listed eBay's dependence on the Beanie Babies market as a risk factor in the 1998 annual report.

Which venture capital firm invested $6.7m in eBay in 1997?

The stake became one of the most celebrated returns in venture history after the 1998 IPO.

Who became eBay's president and CEO in March 1998?

The company then had 30 employees, 500,000 users and $4.7 million in revenue; she stayed a decade before running for governor of California.

At what price did eBay's shares open on NASDAQ at its September 1998 IPO, before closing at $53?

The first-day close gave the company a market value of nearly $1.9 billion.

Which Oregon town renamed itself "Half.com, Oregon" for a year in a publicity stunt?

The company paid $100,000 and donated 20 computers; eBay bought Half.com in 2000 and shut it down in 2017.

How much did eBay pay for PayPal in October 2002?

It phased out its own Billpoint payment service three months later.

Which activist investor pushed eBay to spin off PayPal, completed in July 2015?

eBay later replaced PayPal as its main payments processor with the Dutch firm Adyen in 2018.

Which internet calling company did eBay buy for $2.6bn in 2005?

It never fitted the marketplace; eBay sold 70% in 2009 and Microsoft bought the whole company for $8.5 billion in 2011.

How much did Microsoft pay for Skype in May 2011, after eBay had sold most of its stake?

eBay had kept a 30% minority interest after the 2009 sale to a Silver Lake-led group.

Which ticket-resale marketplace did eBay buy for $310m in 2007?

It sold the business to Viagogo for $4.05 billion in cash in 2020.

Which classifieds site did eBay take a 25% stake in for $32m in 2004?

The stake led to years of litigation before eBay sold it back to Craigslist in 2015.

Which British classifieds website did eBay acquire in May 2005?

It launched its own classifieds brand Kijiji the same year and sold the whole classifieds business to Adevinta in 2020.

Which Chinese rival's Taobao platform drove eBay's market share in China from 85% to under 8%?

eBay shut its Chinese site in 2007; its paid listing model and lack of chat features counted against it.

Competition from which company forced eBay out of Japan in 2002?

The same year eBay entered China and bought a Taiwanese auction firm.

The 2006 Supreme Court case eBay v. MercExchange concerned patents on which feature?

The Court ruled that an injunction is not automatic in patent cases where infringement is proven.

Who replaced eBay's long-serving CEO in January 2008 when she left for politics?

Whitman left to enter politics and lost the 2010 California governor's race to Jerry Brown.

Whose Paris court victory in 2008 forced eBay to ban sales of its perfumes, counterfeit or not?

The court awarded €40 million in damages; a Troyes court fined eBay €20,000 over two fake Hermès bags the same month.

Which jeweller sued eBay in 2004 over fake silver jewellery on the site, and lost?

A federal judge ruled in 2008 that eBay had no legal duty to monitor sellers for counterfeits.

What is the practice of bidding in the final seconds of an auction called?

Shill bidding, by contrast, is a seller secretly bidding to inflate the price.

What is "shill bidding"?

eBay has been criticised for not doing enough to combat it.

Annual eBay charity auctions for lunch with which investor raised $53.2m for the Glide Foundation?

Winning bids ranged from $2 million to $19 million for the final lunch in 2022.

For how much did 41 senators' letter complaining about Rush Limbaugh sell on eBay?

The money went to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation for children of fallen service members.

In 2020, eBay employees were charged with cyberstalking the publishers of which newsletter?

The deliveries sent to Ina and David Steiner's home included a preserved fetal pig and a funeral wreath.

Which CEO resigned in September 2019 under pressure from Elliott Management, with $57m severance?

Investigators found he had no knowledge of the stalking campaign carried out during his tenure.

Who became eBay's CEO in April 2020?

He had spent eight years at eBay earlier in his career before running SamsClub.com for Walmart.

Which product category did eBay's authenticity guarantee cover first, in 2020?

It later expanded to watches, handbags, jewellery and apparel.

Which collectible card game marketplace did eBay buy for about $295m in 2022?

The same year it took a stake in Funko and bought the NFT marketplace KnownOrigin.

Which video game retailer made an unsolicited $56bn bid for eBay in May 2026?

eBay's board rejected it outright as "neither credible nor attractive"; GameStop already held about 5% of the company.

Where is eBay's headquarters?

Its first self-built building there, opened in 2008, carried 3,248 solar panels.

Roughly how many annual active buyers did eBay report in 2023?

They generated $73 billion in transactions, 48% of them in the United States.

Which Indian e-commerce firm got eBay India plus $514m for a 5.44% stake in 2017?

eBay sold the stake to Walmart in 2018 and relaunched its own Indian operations.

Which Dutch payments start-up replaced PayPal as eBay's primary payments provider from 2018?

eBay said the switch would lower costs and give merchants more control.

Which Korean retailer bought eBay's South Korean business for $3bn in 2021?

eBay had entered Korea in 2001 by buying the country's largest auction site and later took control of G-Market.

Which university did eBay's founder graduate from with a computer science degree in 1988?

He then worked for Claris, an Apple subsidiary, before starting AuctionWeb.

What journalism venture did Omidyar announce in 2013 with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras?

He also runs the Honolulu Civil Beat news service and the philanthropic Omidyar Network.

Which children's author's estate asked eBay to ban six books in 2021 over racially insensitive images?

The ban triggered a political backlash and a surge of interest in the discontinued titles.

eBay's CEO from 1998 to 2008 later served as US ambassador to which country from 2022 to 2024?

Between eBay and the embassy she ran Hewlett Packard and the short-lived streaming service Quibi.

Which shipping partner handles eBay's international forwarding programme launched in 2012?

Sellers post to a domestic hub, which forwards the parcel abroad and deals with customs.

How many employees did eBay have when its new CEO arrived in March 1998?

At the time the site had about 500,000 users and US revenues of $4.7 million.

Which classified-ads site did eBay launch in international markets in March 2005?

It reached the United States in July 2007, two months after eBay bought Britain's Gumtree.

How much did eBay pay for GSI Commerce in June 2011?

The business was renamed eBay Enterprise two years later.

eBay's 2012 logo redesign used a thinner variation of which typeface?

The old logo had used a thicker weight of the same face since the 1990s.