46 Fun Facts About EBay

Which boy band's hit did 'Weird Al' Yankovic parody in his 2003 song 'eBay'?

Backstreet Boys' hit became 'eBay' on the album Poodle Hat, which lost its planned video when Eminem refused to let Yankovic film his 'Lose Yourself' parody.

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.

Who invented the story that eBay began so Omidyar's future wife could trade Pez dispensers?

A PR manager made up the Pez tale in 1997 to win reporters' attention for the young company.

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?

His internet provider raised his bill to $250 a month as traffic grew, so Omidyar began charging fees to cover the cost.

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?

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

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.

On which stock exchange did eBay's shares begin trading at its 1998 IPO?

NASDAQ listed the shares, and the soaring first day of trading made Omidyar a billionaire overnight.

Which Oregon town agreed to take a shopping website's name for a year as a publicity stunt?

Halfway adopted the new name only by a one-year council proclamation, so the town's official name stayed Halfway.

Which in-house payment service did eBay phase out after buying PayPal in 2002?

Billpoint lost to PayPal partly because far more eBay sellers already accepted PayPal, so eBay bought its rival and shut its own service.

Which activist investor pushed eBay to spin off PayPal as a separate company?

Carl Icahn's demand was first rejected by eBay, which argued the businesses were better off together, before its board reversed course and agreed to the split.

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

Skype never fitted eBay's marketplace, and eBay sold a majority stake in 2009 while keeping a minority share.

Which company paid $8.5 billion in 2011 for the internet calling service eBay had mostly sold off?

Microsoft later retired its own Windows Live Messenger and moved those users onto the calling service it had bought.

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

StubHub was sold to Viagogo, whose purchase UK regulators cleared only after it agreed to sell StubHub's business outside North America.

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

Craigslist and eBay spent years in litigation over the stake before eBay sold it back to Craigslist in 2015.

Which British classifieds website did eBay acquire in May 2005?

Gumtree went to Adevinta along with eBay's classifieds unit, but UK regulators then required its British site to be sold to another buyer.

Which Chinese company's shopping site took most of eBay's market share in China?

Alibaba let users trade on Taobao without the transaction fees eBay charged, which helped Taobao become China's top auction site.

Which company's auction site drove eBay out of Japan in 2002?

Yahoo Japan dominated online auctions there, and eBay admitted it had entered the Japanese market too late to catch up.

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?

John Donahoe stayed until eBay split off its payments business, then stepped down so new chiefs could lead both companies.

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

LVMH argued only its authorized dealers could sell those perfumes, so even genuine bottles were barred from eBay while eBay appealed.

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

Tiffany & Co. claimed over 70% of Tiffany silver on eBay was fake, but the courts found eBay had no duty to police 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?

$2,100,100 went to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, and Limbaugh said he would match the donation.

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

EcommerceBytes editors Ina and David Steiner were sent live cockroaches, a bloody pig mask and a funeral wreath.

Which eBay CEO resigned in September 2019 under pressure from Elliott Management?

Devin Wenig's messages about a critical blogger were judged inappropriate, but eBay's internal inquiry found no evidence he knew of the stalking campaign in advance.

Which ten-year-old snack said to show the Virgin Mary's face sold on eBay for $28,000 in 2004?

A grilled cheese with one bite gone was pulled by eBay as a suspected joke, then restored once the offer seemed genuine, and an online casino won it.

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

TCGPlayer's Syracuse center was shut by eBay in 2025, with over 200 jobs cut, as operations moved to Kentucky.

Which 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.

Which Indian e-commerce firm took over eBay India in 2017, giving eBay a stake in return?

Flipkart's takeover by Walmart in 2018 led eBay to sell its stake for about $1.1 billion.

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.

Whose six withdrawn books did eBay begin delisting in 2021?

Dr. Seuss Enterprises had pulled the six books for offensive imagery, so eBay began sweeping its marketplace to stop their resale.

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

Kenya was her posting under Democratic President Joe Biden, though she had run for California governor as a Republican.

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?

30 employees worked there, and the new CEO at first didn't want the job until a visit to the small team won her over.

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.

Which body part drew bids of $5.7 million on eBay in 1999 before the site pulled the listing?

A kidney reached $5.7 million in what eBay took for a prank, and the listing came down because selling human organs is a US federal crime carrying up to five years in prison.

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.