There is no better place to buy or sell items than on eBay. New, used, old, rare, or something that falls between these lines can be traded on this platform.
Pierre Omidyar created and introduced this platform in 1995. The objective he had in mind was to develop a platform for sellers to meet with buyers, an online marketplace.
In over twenty years since the launch of eBay, from its first sale of a broken laser pointer, it has grown into a massive ecommerce from what was considered an ordinary marketplace. Over the years, common items like electronics, cars, accessories, and collectables have been put up for sale.
There have also been some weird sales like a sandwich which was half-eaten by Justin Timberlake, and an Air sneaker from a Kanye West Concert stored in a bag.
With eBay, it has become possible to shop online — and still get the cheapest prices available. This is a result of a lot of features which the site offers like the eBay vouchers, and flash sales in which items appear at a low price for a short time.
Seeing that anything you need is just a click away, the primary objective of the site has been realized. If you are looking for cool items like pet toys, recipe books, makeup products, and ornamental articles for your home, you can get them all. There are also some weird sales like someone selling an imaginary friend, naming rights to a baby, pieces of Mars, and also the meaning of life.
During the growth of the company since its launch, various companies were acquired. The total number of these acquisitions over the years is about 60. The first of these acquisitions was in 1998 when eBay acquired an online auction company named Up4Sale.
The most recent acquisition was that of Terapeak in 2017. Terapeak is a data analysis company which provides sellers with information on buying habits.
To make the transactions on the site safer for its customers, eBay acquired Elon Musk’s PayPal. It also acquired Craigslist which had become well-known not only for offering services similar to those on eBay but also for the feature that lets people find jobs and also render services on the site.
Another acquisition was that of Shopping.com which eBay uses in its comparison feature and Rent.com through which millennials can look up different apartments.
StumbleUpon was another acquisition which had people talking. It is a discovery engine which allowed users to rate any website they discover.
The purchase of Skype Technologies (popularly known as Skype) still ranks as the highest purchase by the company. In September 2005, not only did eBay acquire this massive telecommunications company, it also paid a huge sum for the company. The acquisition cost $2.6 billion.
There have also been other acquisitions which involved other companies not too well known. These acquisitions include that of Twice (an online marketplace for second-hand clothes), Meetup (an online social network for setting up a meet in real life), Flipkart (a popular ecommerce company in India), and iBazar (an online platform for classified ads).
Check out the infographic below to learn more about this great company.
