eBay is an American Internet auction and shopping company. It is one of the world’s largest online marketplaces. Hundreds of millions of people and businesses buy and sell a wide variety of goods and services on eBay. The company operates in more than 30 countries. It has corporate headquarters in San Jose , California.
Pierre Morad Omidyar , a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, founded eBay as AuctionWeb in 1995 in San Jose. It was the first online auction website . Initially, Omidyar treated AuctionWeb as a hobby and offered its service for free. Users could list items, view them, and place bids on the items. Omidyar ran AuctionWeb off a website he used for his other businesses, called Echo Bay Technology Group. He registered the name for AuctionWeb as eBay.com. With no warehouse, business office, inventory, or shipping department, eBay operated entirely as a virtual, online company. AuctionWeb was officially renamed eBay in 1997.
By 1996, the number of buyers and sellers viewing and using Omidyar’s site had gotten so large that the web server company supporting it started charging Omidyar a fee to support the website. From that time on, eBay began to charge sellers using the site a small percentage of the cost of their transactions. Over the years, different payment models were developed. In 2002, eBay bought the Internet payment company PayPal to assist with online payments. PayPal enables users to securely send and receive payments over the Internet.
eBay eventually became a multibillion-dollar company with operations worldwide. Millions of items are offered for sale on the site, including rare, hard-to-find, or discontinued items, as well as real estate and travel services. The site still serves individuals who sell items to other individuals. But it also allows major retailers to offer shopping services directly to stores as well as to individuals. In addition, the company offers online ticket event trading and classified advertising service. In July 2015, eBay spun off PayPal into an independent company. A parent company spins off one of its businesses or divisions by selling or distributing shares of the business to stockholders.
