eBay Trivia
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46 free EBay trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
eBay began as a hobby site called AuctionWeb in September 1995 and became one of the defining companies of the internet, and this quiz covers the whole story: the broken laser pointer that sold for $14.83, the Pez-dispenser legend a PR manager made up, the Beanie Babies that were a tenth of all listings, the 1998 IPO, the PayPal, Skype and StubHub deals, the retreat from China and Japan, the CEOs from Meg Whitman to Jamie Iannone and the cyberstalking scandal of 2020. Easy questions ask who founded it and what the name is short for; harder ones dig into the gold-mining company that owned echobay.com, the Oregon town that renamed itself Half.com, the Warren Buffett lunches that raised $53 million and the 2026 GameStop bid the board called neither credible nor attractive. It suits tech and business quiz nights, anyone who has ever sniped an auction, and general-knowledge fans who lived through the dot-com era. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on eBay, its founder, its executives and the companies it bought and sold, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which boy band's hit did 'Weird Al' Yankovic parody in his 2003 song 'eBay'?
Backstreet Boys
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.
Q 02What was eBay originally called?
AuctionWeb
It was renamed eBay in September 1997 after Omidyar's consulting firm, Echo Bay Technology Group.
Q 03What was the first item ever sold on the site, for $14.83?
A broken laser pointer
Omidyar checked whether the buyer knew it was broken; the man replied that he collected broken laser pointers.
Q 04Who invented the story that eBay began so Omidyar's future wife could trade Pez dispensers?
A PR manager
A PR manager made up the Pez tale in 1997 to win reporters' attention for the young company.
Q 05Why did Omidyar shorten the name from Echo Bay to eBay?
echobay.com was already owned by a gold-mining company
Echo Bay Mines held the domain, so eBay.com it was.
Q 06What prompted Omidyar to start charging fees?
His internet provider raised his bill
His internet provider raised his bill to $250 a month as traffic grew, so Omidyar began charging fees to cover the cost.
Q 07What was the job of eBay's first employee, Chris Agarpao?
Processing mailed cheque payments
Fee payments arrived by post in the pre-PayPal days.
Q 08Who was hired as eBay's first president in 1996?
Jeff Skoll
Jeff Skoll later founded Participant Media, producer of Spotlight and An Inconvenient Truth, and the Skoll Foundation.
Q 09Which venture capital firm invested $6.7m in eBay in 1997?
Benchmark
The stake became one of the most celebrated returns in venture history after the 1998 IPO.
Q 10Who became eBay's president and CEO in March 1998?
Meg Whitman
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.
Q 11On which stock exchange did eBay's shares begin trading at its 1998 IPO?
NASDAQ
NASDAQ listed the shares, and the soaring first day of trading made Omidyar a billionaire overnight.
Q 12Which Oregon town agreed to take a shopping website's name for a year as a publicity stunt?
Halfway
Halfway adopted the new name only by a one-year council proclamation, so the town's official name stayed Halfway.
Q 13Which in-house payment service did eBay phase out after buying PayPal in 2002?
Billpoint
Billpoint lost to PayPal partly because far more eBay sellers already accepted PayPal, so eBay bought its rival and shut its own service.
Q 21Which company's auction site drove eBay out of Japan in 2002?
Yahoo
Yahoo Japan dominated online auctions there, and eBay admitted it had entered the Japanese market too late to catch up.
Q 22The 2006 Supreme Court case eBay v. MercExchange concerned patents on which feature?
Buy It Now
The Court ruled that an injunction is not automatic in patent cases where infringement is proven.
Q 23Who replaced eBay's long-serving CEO in January 2008 when she left for politics?
John Donahoe
John Donahoe stayed until eBay split off its payments business, then stepped down so new chiefs could lead both companies.
Q 14Which activist investor pushed eBay to spin off PayPal as a separate company?
Carl Icahn
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.
Q 15Which internet calling company did eBay buy for $2.6bn in 2005?
Skype
Skype never fitted eBay's marketplace, and eBay sold a majority stake in 2009 while keeping a minority share.
Q 16Which company paid $8.5 billion in 2011 for the internet calling service eBay had mostly sold off?
Microsoft
Microsoft later retired its own Windows Live Messenger and moved those users onto the calling service it had bought.
Q 17Which ticket-resale marketplace did eBay buy for $310m in 2007?
StubHub
StubHub was sold to Viagogo, whose purchase UK regulators cleared only after it agreed to sell StubHub's business outside North America.
Q 18Which classifieds site did eBay take a 25% stake in for $32m in 2004?
Craigslist
Craigslist and eBay spent years in litigation over the stake before eBay sold it back to Craigslist in 2015.
Q 19Which British classifieds website did eBay acquire in May 2005?
Gumtree
Gumtree went to Adevinta along with eBay's classifieds unit, but UK regulators then required its British site to be sold to another buyer.
Q 20Which Chinese company's shopping site took most of eBay's market share in China?
Alibaba
Alibaba let users trade on Taobao without the transaction fees eBay charged, which helped Taobao become China's top auction site.
Q 24Whose Paris court victory in 2008 forced eBay to ban sales of its perfumes, counterfeit or not?
LVMH
LVMH argued only its authorized dealers could sell those perfumes, so even genuine bottles were barred from eBay while eBay appealed.
Q 25Which jeweller sued eBay in 2004 over fake silver jewellery on the site, and lost?
Tiffany & Co.
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.
Q 26What is the practice of bidding in the final seconds of an auction called?
Sniping
Shill bidding, by contrast, is a seller secretly bidding to inflate the price.
Q 27What is "shill bidding"?
A seller secretly inflating the price with fake bids
eBay has been criticised for not doing enough to combat it.
Q 28Annual eBay charity auctions for lunch with which investor raised $53.2m for the Glide Foundation?
Warren Buffett
Winning bids ranged from $2 million to $19 million for the final lunch in 2022.
Q 29For how much did 41 senators' letter complaining about Rush Limbaugh sell on eBay?
$2,100,100
$2,100,100 went to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, and Limbaugh said he would match the donation.
Q 30In 2020, eBay employees were charged with cyberstalking the publishers of which newsletter?
EcommerceBytes
EcommerceBytes editors Ina and David Steiner were sent live cockroaches, a bloody pig mask and a funeral wreath.