eBay Inc.

eBay was born over Labor Day weekend in 1995, when Pierre Omidyar, a computer programmer, wrote the code for an auction website that he ran from his home computer. Today, his website has evolved to become eBay, the largest online marketplace in the world.

eBay provides an open trading platform where the market determines the value of items that are sold. Over the years, the site has become a cultural barometer of sorts, providing a view into what objects consumers want most at any time.

eBay has also made two very important acquisitions which have allowed it to continually remain as the market leader in online transacting. The first of these is PayPal, which allows all customers to easily, safely and quickly send and receive transactions online.

The second of these is Skype, which has revolutionsed the way people communicate online. Acquired by eBay in October 2005, Skype allows people everywhere to make unlimited voice and video calls online for free using its software. Wheeling and dealing over the Internet just got much easier, and fun too!

Certainly, with a the online marketplace being so laissez faire, there have been numerous amounts of unusual items being put up for sale on eBay, limited only by the boundaries of one’s imagination. For instance, in late 1999, a man offered one of his kidneys for auction on eBay, attempting to profit from the potentially lucrative market for transplantable. On other occasions, people and even entire towns have been listed, often as a joke or to garner free publicity.

Other interesting items have also been put up for sale on eBay. Among the following include:

a) In January of 2006, a British man named Leigh Knight, sold an unwanted Brussels sprout left over from his Christmas dinner for £1550 in aid of cancer research.

b) A Coventry University student got £1.20 for a single cornflake.

c) The German Language Association sold the German language to call attention for the growing influence of Pidgin-English in modern German.

d) A group of four men from Australia auctioned themselves to spend the weekend with the promise of “beers, snacks, good conversation and a hell of a lot of laughs” for AU$1,300.

e) In May of 2008, Paul Osborn of UK puts his wife Sharon for sale in eBay alleging that she had an affair with a coworker -.-

In any case, does anyone know what the ‘e’ in eBay stands for?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 11:23 am and is filed under Organizational Writeups, eBay. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.