Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works in a love all things tech, and
Speaker 1: today we're going to conclude our series on eBay and
Speaker 1: bring it up to date. We're up to two thousand
Speaker 1: seven in the saga of eBay, but we're gonna really
Speaker 1: toward two thousand fifteen or so. We're really gonna be
Speaker 1: jumping ahead quite a bit. But this would be Meg
Speaker 1: Whitman's last year as president and CEO of eBay in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. That same year, eBay purchased stub Hub.
Speaker 1: StubHub is an online ticket exchange company and provides a
Speaker 1: marketplace for buyers and sellers of tickets for various live events.
Speaker 1: The company started back in two thousand when to Stanford
Speaker 1: Business School graduates named Eric Baker and Jeff Fleurs an opportunity,
Speaker 1: and by two thousand five, StubHub was generating two hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars in sales. Now, not everything was going smoothly
Speaker 1: for StubHub. In that time. Some people had used the
Speaker 1: service to sell counterfeit tickets others found that they were
Speaker 1: being penalized by major sports teams for getting a season ticket.
Speaker 1: They would go out and buy a season ticket to
Speaker 1: a sports team, then they would sell their regular season
Speaker 1: seats on StubHub per game. So let's say I get
Speaker 1: a season ticket to the Braves, for example, and then
Speaker 1: on individual games, I'm selling my seats to anyone who
Speaker 1: goes through on StubHub, and I make a profit because individually,
Speaker 1: selling those seats over and over again, I make more
Speaker 1: money than it cost for me to get the season tickets. Well,
Speaker 1: the New York Yankees suspended dozens of season ticket holders
Speaker 1: rights to attend playoff games after finding out they had
Speaker 1: been selling regular season seats and denied them the opportunity
Speaker 1: to renew their season tickets. So once people cut onto that,
Speaker 1: they said, well, you know, we went went, We're going
Speaker 1: to the playoffs, but you don't get to see it
Speaker 1: because you've been selling your seats to other people and
Speaker 1: that's against our rules. Where we can make tons of
Speaker 1: money selling seats, but you sure as heck can't. Yeah, anyway, UM,
Speaker 1: I have different feelings about this, largely because it's very
Speaker 1: hard to go see a live theater show particularly at
Speaker 1: a notable venue like on Broadway, without paying crazy amounts
Speaker 1: of money for a ticket, Because you have people buying
Speaker 1: up seats and then reselling them out of markup price,
Speaker 1: and it's it's pretty infuriating at the same time seeing
Speaker 1: people get punished for doing this. It's interesting, like it
Speaker 1: opens up a gray area, like where is it legal
Speaker 1: versus illegal? Anyway, I guess for season tickets there are
Speaker 1: specific their specific wording involved when you purchase those season passes,
Speaker 1: and that's what tells you that you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: do this sort of thing. StubHub in the New England
Speaker 1: pay Trips got into legal battles over the rights to
Speaker 1: resell tickets, issues with voided tickets, claims of unfair trade practices,
Speaker 1: and more, and ultimately the courts decided against stub Hub.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't happen until two thousand nine, though, so that
Speaker 1: would be after eBay had already purchased them. eBay bought
Speaker 1: stub Hub for three hundred ten million dollars, a princely
Speaker 1: some in two thousand eight. We'd get another new president
Speaker 1: for PayPal with Scott Thompson. Jeff Jordan had been president
Speaker 1: from two thousand four to two thousand and six and
Speaker 1: regive Doda from two thousand six to two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: Now remember PayPal was now part of eBay. Jordan's had
Speaker 1: gone on to lead Open Table, and Doddo would move
Speaker 1: into an executive vice president position with the parent company
Speaker 1: of eBay. Thompson would serve as president of PayPal until
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, when he would leave to become the
Speaker 1: CEO of a different company, one that has struggled famously
Speaker 1: over the last few years. Yahoo. In March two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: Meg Whitman stepped down as president and CEO of eBay
Speaker 1: and John Donahoe absumed that role. And when Whitman joined eBay,
Speaker 1: it was a company of about thirty employees. By the
Speaker 1: time she left, eBay had grown into a global corporation
Speaker 1: with more than fifteen thousand employees valued at forty billion dollars.
Speaker 1: The company's growth had slowed quite a bit, but to
Speaker 1: be fair, it had such an explosive growth period when
Speaker 1: it was expanding into new markets it would have been
Speaker 1: unrealistic to expect that pace to continue at that particular rate.
Speaker 1: Whitman had led eBay into many new business ventures, and
Speaker 1: she had opened operations throughout the world. One of her regrets, however,
Speaker 1: was her failure to establish eBay as an effective presence
Speaker 1: in Japan early on. According to Whitman, her opportunity to
Speaker 1: get into Japan coincided with the site's blackout crashes in
Speaker 1: that I talked about in an earlier episode. The company
Speaker 1: had to switch focus to fixing its infrastructure and improving
Speaker 1: reliability and lost the chance to get its foothold in Japan.
Speaker 1: At that time, the company had established a Japanese site,
Speaker 1: but without proper support, the outlet didn't do very well,
Speaker 1: and ultimately Women chose to to close up shop in Japan.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be until two thousand nine when eBay would
Speaker 1: create some partnerships with local companies in Japan then managed
Speaker 1: to get back into that market, and it wasn't until
Speaker 1: February before eBay announced it would acquire a company called
Speaker 1: Geosis g I O s I S that conducted e
Speaker 1: commerce in Japan that would really get to try again.
Speaker 1: With Japan identified as the third fastest growing e commerce
Speaker 1: region in the world, it marked a pretty late start
Speaker 1: for eBay to get into that region. Women had a
Speaker 1: bit of a mixed reputation among eBay users, the actual
Speaker 1: buyers and sellers on the site. For one thing, there
Speaker 1: was no denying the company had grown significantly under her leadership,
Speaker 1: but she also had made choices that at times upset
Speaker 1: the community. For example, at one point, she gave Disney
Speaker 1: its own auctions page, which many saw as preferential treatment
Speaker 1: that put normal sellers at a disadvantage. They didn't get
Speaker 1: the platform that Disney had, and of course Disney is
Speaker 1: a multibillion dollar corporation, so it felt like they were
Speaker 1: being shoved aside. And plus, Whitman had actually worked for
Speaker 1: Disney in the past before she came to eBay, so
Speaker 1: there was that element as well. However, Whitman actually paid
Speaker 1: attention to reactions and she backed off of her decision.
Speaker 1: She reversed it, so it's not like she was saying
Speaker 1: it's my way or the highway. She actually did listen
Speaker 1: to the community and she paid attention. After her departure,
Speaker 1: Meg Whitman ran for governor of California in the twenty
Speaker 1: ten gubernatorial race. She ran as a Republican and largely
Speaker 1: funded her own campaign out of her own money. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: she would lose to Jerry Brown, the Democrat. Ended it
Speaker 1: for a governor, and Whitman would go on to support
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney during his bids for presidency. In the election, however,
Speaker 1: she famously supported Hillary Clinton rather than the Republican candidate
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Starting in September twenty eleven, Whitman served as
Speaker 1: the CEO of Hewlett Packard. She did not get rave reviews,
Speaker 1: and Hewlett Packard didn't do so well in the following years,
Speaker 1: and Whitman shouldered a lot of that blame, perhaps unfairly.
Speaker 1: She would step down as CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprises
Speaker 1: on February one, eighteen. John Donahoe was now the man
Speaker 1: in charge. So here's just a little bit more about him.
Speaker 1: He was born in Evison Evanston, Illinois. He worked at
Speaker 1: a beer distribution company out of high school before he
Speaker 1: became an associate consultant with a company called Bayne and Company.
Speaker 1: He started there in nineteen eighty two and worked his
Speaker 1: way up the chain, eventually becoming the CEO of the
Speaker 1: entire company in nineteen From there, he joined eBay as
Speaker 1: the president of eBay market Places. During his tenure as
Speaker 1: the president and CEO of all of eBay, which lasted
Speaker 1: nearly seven and a half years, he more than doubled
Speaker 1: the revenues of the company to eighteen billion dollars, and
Speaker 1: he saw eBay's market value hit eighty billion. He would
Speaker 1: step down as president in but he joined the board
Speaker 1: of directors for PayPal as the chairman at that time.
Speaker 1: Now it's easy to forget this, but back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, the app store for the iPhone was brand new.
Speaker 1: It was a new thing. It did not launch with
Speaker 1: the first iPhone. It was only available starting with the
Speaker 1: second generation iPhone, also known as the iPhone three G.
Speaker 1: eBay was one of just a handful of companies that
Speaker 1: had an application ready at launch, and in fact, it
Speaker 1: got featured a bit during Apple's unveiling. Also in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, eBay made more acquisitions, including a company called
Speaker 1: bill Me Later and e commerce company uh. They made
Speaker 1: that act position for nearly one billion dollars. Bill Me
Speaker 1: Later is a credit company. As the name would suggest,
Speaker 1: you get billed later on, and the way it works
Speaker 1: is that if you choose bill me Later as an
Speaker 1: option when you're checking out, the service asked you for
Speaker 1: your birth date and the last four digits of your
Speaker 1: Social Security number, and then it runs a quick credit
Speaker 1: check on you, and assuming the credit check is favorable,
Speaker 1: you are credited the money for the purchase, and then
Speaker 1: you pay back the service with interest. Of course, that's
Speaker 1: how it makes money. However, eBay also at this time
Speaker 1: laid off about ten percent of its workforce, which equalled
Speaker 1: around one thousand, six hundred employees. The company focused most
Speaker 1: of the layoffs on the marketplace division, as that was
Speaker 1: the department that had slowed in growth the most to
Speaker 1: two single digit rates. It was still growing, but at
Speaker 1: a very slow pace. eBay would hold another big round
Speaker 1: of layoffs in firing about two thousand, four hundred employees
Speaker 1: on that go around, which represented about seven percent of
Speaker 1: its workforce at the time. So you see how big
Speaker 1: the company grew in the meantime. If ten percent is
Speaker 1: sixteen hundred back at this point and then in two thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred is only seven, I mean, that's that's that
Speaker 1: shows you the company did grow even after this this
Speaker 1: round of layoffs. Regarding the two thousand eight layoffs, Donajo
Speaker 1: said it was necessary to quote improve our operations and
Speaker 1: strengthen our ability to continue investing in growth end quote.
Speaker 1: So in other words, he wanted to make sure that
Speaker 1: the company was focusing on the areas that were developing
Speaker 1: the fastest and to stop pouring resources into areas that
Speaker 1: had really plateaued. One last thing about two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: In November of two eight, a seller named Jack Sheng
Speaker 1: became the first seller on eBay to get a feedback
Speaker 1: score of one million. You remember that Pierre Omidier had
Speaker 1: created this feedback ability where you could give someone a
Speaker 1: positive or negative one in feedback. So Jack Shang had
Speaker 1: received at least one million plus one votes. Uh, maybe
Speaker 1: more than that, because if some people had given negative
Speaker 1: feedback then that would have taken away from the total.
Speaker 1: So once he hit one million, eBay honored him by
Speaker 1: naming a conference room after him over at eBay headquarters.
Speaker 1: Now I've gotta more to say about eBay, but before
Speaker 1: I get into it, let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. eBay launched a program in two thousand
Speaker 1: nine inside the company called the Women's Initiative Network or WIN,
Speaker 1: which provides opportunities and career development training for women interested
Speaker 1: in building a career in any department within the company,
Speaker 1: which I think is pretty cool and in fact, one
Speaker 1: thing I have to say about eBay is whether or
Speaker 1: not you like the site or the service, whether or
Speaker 1: not you've ever done an auction, there are shop there.
Speaker 1: The company itself has a reputation for promoting fairness in
Speaker 1: its UH and its corporation among its employees. So everything
Speaker 1: from giving special opportunities for people to pursue training career development,
Speaker 1: making certain that people are not being treated unfairly due
Speaker 1: to ethnicity or gender, or sexuality or any of those things.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting and really admirable. So whether or not
Speaker 1: you like the company, at least the policies that the
Speaker 1: company has put in place, I think have been really
Speaker 1: progressive and I like that a lot. Two thousand nine
Speaker 1: was also the year eBay sold the majority of Skype
Speaker 1: to a group of private investors. I mentioned this in
Speaker 1: the previous episode and how initially it looked like eBay
Speaker 1: was going to take a huge loss on the purchase
Speaker 1: and failed integration of Skype. However, Microsoft's bid a little
Speaker 1: bit later to buy up Skype for more than eight
Speaker 1: billion dollars would end up offsetting that. Ex events, they
Speaker 1: ended up making enough money on the UH the amount
Speaker 1: of Skype they may they retained because they only sold
Speaker 1: a majority of their steak in two thousand nine, they
Speaker 1: kept about thirty five percent, and when Microsoft bought up
Speaker 1: all of it later for eight billion dollars, they sold
Speaker 1: it off in and it turned out that the difference
Speaker 1: more than paid off for their initial purchase of Skype,
Speaker 1: even after you factor in things like the debt that
Speaker 1: needed to be paid off and and taxes and things
Speaker 1: like that. In two thousand ten, eBay got hit with
Speaker 1: a patent infringement lawsuit from a company called XPRT Ventures
Speaker 1: ll C. This story let me down a real rabbit
Speaker 1: hole and research, because I saw plenty of news reports
Speaker 1: from two thousand ten about the lawsuit being filed, but
Speaker 1: not nothing really substantial about how it all shook out.
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, the reason for that part
Speaker 1: is that it's eight years later and the lawsuit is
Speaker 1: still going on. So what is actually at the heart
Speaker 1: of this lawsuit. Well, xp RT Ventures, which as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, is a company that has patents
Speaker 1: but doesn't actually do anything else, sued eBay for three
Speaker 1: point eight billion dollars in twenty ten. An alleged that
Speaker 1: the company was infringing upon several patents and had stolen
Speaker 1: trade secrets. According to the complaint, the patent holders met
Speaker 1: with eBay in two thousand one and showed a law
Speaker 1: firm claiming to represent eBay the patent applications for some
Speaker 1: of the patents they had been filing for online payments. Then,
Speaker 1: the complaint alleges that eBay used that information later when
Speaker 1: eBay incorporated some PayPal functionality into its own e commerce
Speaker 1: payment platform several years later. Now the plot thickens. The
Speaker 1: actual patents were rejected multiple times during this application process.
Speaker 1: The final patent was accepted in two thousand nine. The
Speaker 1: website tech Dirt pointed out that the finalized patent, the
Speaker 1: one that actually would be protected from infringement, was different
Speaker 1: from the original filing, the one that eBay supposedly took
Speaker 1: a look at and then later infringed. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: the the wording that was present in two thousand one
Speaker 1: uh that was that had changed by the time the
Speaker 1: patent was finally accepted, because it had been revised multiple
Speaker 1: times until accepted in two thousand nine. Other outlets outright
Speaker 1: called xp RT a patent troll. A patentrol is a
Speaker 1: person or a company that files or buys patents with
Speaker 1: no intent to produce anything from them, but rather use
Speaker 1: them to threaten litigation against others in order to win
Speaker 1: court cases or more likely get a settlement out of court.
Speaker 1: You could also license patents to companies, and in fact,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of companies that do licensed patents
Speaker 1: out to other people or other organizations. But there's a
Speaker 1: disturbing trend among certain groups to kind of hoard these
Speaker 1: patents and just wait for someone to do something that
Speaker 1: appears to violate them or to infringe upon them, and
Speaker 1: then they threaten legal action. And some companies, rather than
Speaker 1: going through the process of having to defend themselves in court,
Speaker 1: which is incredibly expensive and time consuming, will just end
Speaker 1: up coming to an agreement for an out of court settlement.
Speaker 1: And that's how these companies make their money. They don't
Speaker 1: make it by producing something or building anything, or licensing
Speaker 1: and you know, ideas out to other people, or rather
Speaker 1: patents patents aren't really for ideas, it's it's the implementation
Speaker 1: of an idea. Instead, they wait for someone to do
Speaker 1: something that looks like it's an infringement and then they
Speaker 1: go after them and with the hope of an out
Speaker 1: of court settlement or maybe a court award if the
Speaker 1: whole case goes to decision. The most recent information I
Speaker 1: could find about this involved eBay arguing that the patents
Speaker 1: in question contain unpatentable materials such as abstract ideas you
Speaker 1: cannot patent and abstract idea. That information all came to
Speaker 1: light back in the spring of at least that was
Speaker 1: where the documents I found were. That's when they were
Speaker 1: filed was in So this is still unfolding as I
Speaker 1: record this, and I have to admit I haven't read
Speaker 1: all the legal proceedings. It would take me days to
Speaker 1: go through it all, or even the full two page complaint,
Speaker 1: because that was it was enormous. It could well be
Speaker 1: that XPRT has a valid argument here, So I don't
Speaker 1: want to give you guys the feeling that the whole
Speaker 1: thing is without merit. That might not be the case.
Speaker 1: There may be a real legit case behind xp rt
Speaker 1: s allegations. I am amazed that this battle is stretched
Speaker 1: into twentyen though, because typically you would see either a
Speaker 1: settlement in this case, you would argue that, well, it's
Speaker 1: because eBay is fully confident that they did not do
Speaker 1: anything wrong and therefore they are defending themselves, um or
Speaker 1: you would see the accusers dropped the case because it
Speaker 1: would just get so expensive to continue. But neither of
Speaker 1: those things have happened. Yet another legal issue that began
Speaker 1: to broil back in twenty ten would eventually scoop up eBay.
Speaker 1: It was a antitrust action from the United States Department
Speaker 1: of Justice, and later it would inspire a class action
Speaker 1: lawsuit brought against several companies in the tech space, including eBay, Lucasfilm, Apple,
Speaker 1: and Google, among others. I think Intel was in there too,
Speaker 1: but the charge was that these companies were colluding with
Speaker 1: one another in an agreement to not conduct cold call
Speaker 1: recruitment efforts with each other's talent. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: these companies were not supposed to try and hire talent
Speaker 1: away from each other, which on the corporate level seems
Speaker 1: like it's all fair, right, You would say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: of course, it's not really fair for Intel to go
Speaker 1: after Google, or a Google to go after Apple, and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. But then if you look
Speaker 1: at it from the perspective of the employees, you would argue,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, this is denying people the opportunity to
Speaker 1: potentially improve their careers, to go and get a more
Speaker 1: competitive salary or a more fulfilling job somewhere, and that
Speaker 1: was in fact the basis of the argument both from
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice and the class action lawsuit. The
Speaker 1: Department of Justice suit was settled pretty much the day
Speaker 1: it was filed. The class action lawsuit also went into
Speaker 1: settlement with various companies paying out to the sixty four
Speaker 1: thousand or so employees who were represented in the suit. UH,
Speaker 1: but it all depended upon individual UH companies and the
Speaker 1: percentages of that sixty four thousand because not all of
Speaker 1: them worked for the same company. Obviously. Also in eBay's
Speaker 1: app would launch on the iPad, that was a brand
Speaker 1: new product in and the company acquired Milo dot com
Speaker 1: and that was a local shopping service. The service would
Speaker 1: let shoppers research products and compare prices to buy locally
Speaker 1: with real time availability information and so it kind of
Speaker 1: go through the inventory of various local stores and you
Speaker 1: could price do price comparison right there before heading out
Speaker 1: of your house to go and actually buy something. eBay
Speaker 1: bought Milo dot Com for reported seventy five million bucks,
Speaker 1: and that was just one of many acquisitions eBay made
Speaker 1: during this period. And to go through every single one
Speaker 1: of them would be pretty bonkers. Also, a lot of
Speaker 1: them were, you know, like commerce sites or data and
Speaker 1: analysts sites, things that most of us don't have any
Speaker 1: connection to, and it wouldn't really be meaningful to go
Speaker 1: into it anyway. But I will hit some of the
Speaker 1: ones that are super important, because uh, I think we
Speaker 1: need to at least acknowledge a few of them. But
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to do another episode on eBay
Speaker 1: right away, so we're not gonna go through every single one.
Speaker 1: So let's keep on trucking. Uh. We're up to two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven now, and I'm gonna go fairly fast from
Speaker 1: this point and just hit the big story points. In
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, eBay continued its acquisitions, including the purchase
Speaker 1: of a majority stake in the online marketplace Giddy Giddy Your,
Speaker 1: which is based in Turkey and I only included it
Speaker 1: because that name is awesome. Uh. Then in two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: eBay launched PayPal Here, a system that would allow small
Speaker 1: businesses to accept PayPal as a payment option. Some analysts
Speaker 1: began to worry that eBay might be pushing PayPal to
Speaker 1: move beyond its scope of services to the detriment of
Speaker 1: its core business. David Marcus would become the president of
Speaker 1: PayPal in two thousand twelve, and then in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: eBay would acquire Braintree, a company called Braintree for eight
Speaker 1: million dollars. Braintree is a payment processing service that automates
Speaker 1: online payments, including stuff like recurring billing. I include it
Speaker 1: here because Braintree also was the parent company of Venmo.
Speaker 1: Venmo is a payment transfer service that lets you send
Speaker 1: money directly to another Venmo user, and it's an easy
Speaker 1: way to transfer money between average, everyday people right. It
Speaker 1: was created by some developers who saw the opportunity for
Speaker 1: a way that the average person could send somebody else
Speaker 1: some money. Let's say that you go out for an
Speaker 1: evening with a friend of yours and you realize, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I left my wallet at home, and your friends says,
Speaker 1: we'll tell you what, I'll spot you tonight and you'll
Speaker 1: just owe me. Venmo was a way that you could
Speaker 1: very quickly send money from an account to your friends account,
Speaker 1: so that you could pay them back and not have
Speaker 1: that just sit over your head like an evil ax
Speaker 1: over your friendship, threatening to follow at any moment. H
Speaker 1: So now PayPal would actually own Venmo, which actually makes
Speaker 1: me chuckle a bit, because I know some young folks
Speaker 1: who would turn their nose up at paypalty said, oh
Speaker 1: that's I would never use PayPal. I use Venmo, And
Speaker 1: they clearly did not realize the Venmo was owned by PayPal.
Speaker 1: I just find that amusing. But then I'm old and grouchy,
Speaker 1: so to pay that with a grain of salt. Also
Speaker 1: in eBay launched a new venture called digital Storefronts. The
Speaker 1: store of friends were really interactive screens that showed various products,
Speaker 1: and customers could order them by going up to the
Speaker 1: screen and touching using gesture controls that would send information
Speaker 1: to the customer's mobile device, and then they could use
Speaker 1: PayPal on the mobile device to actually pay for the
Speaker 1: thing and arrange for a delivery to their homes. Later
Speaker 1: on a post on the Forrester dot com blog, in
Speaker 1: stated that this experiment really failed to deliver additional value
Speaker 1: to the shopping experience, that it was trying too hard
Speaker 1: to change things. But they they said that there was
Speaker 1: an update to this strategy that was much more effective.
Speaker 1: It was an integration in a Rebecca Minkoff store in Soho,
Speaker 1: in which the digital windows inside the store provided contextual
Speaker 1: information about the products that were there in the store,
Speaker 1: as well as help customers make purchasing decisions and link
Speaker 1: them to customer loyalty programs. And they were interactive in
Speaker 1: a way where you were around the actual physical objects,
Speaker 1: and the author of the piece, whose name I don't
Speaker 1: know because I couldn't find it on the blog post,
Speaker 1: stated that rather than trying to overhaul the entire shopping experience,
Speaker 1: this tactic was aimed more at enhancing the experience and
Speaker 1: that was more effective. Well, we're in the home stretch.
Speaker 1: We've got just a little bit more to say about eBay,
Speaker 1: but before I get into that, let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. According to its official company timeline,
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen, eBay announced that it would spin
Speaker 1: off PayPal into a separate company. Now, this was something
Speaker 1: that Donahoe had initially resisted, as did the board of directors,
Speaker 1: but intense pressures in the market pretty much forced eBay's hand.
Speaker 1: So what was going on? Well, first, there was a
Speaker 1: guy named Carl Icon. Carrl Icon is a billionaire businessman
Speaker 1: and an investor who has a large steak in lots
Speaker 1: of different company including eBay. He had more than forty
Speaker 1: six million shares in eBay. Icon pointed out that PayPal
Speaker 1: was the fastest growing division in all of the company
Speaker 1: of eBay, and he said it would be growing even
Speaker 1: faster if it weren't under the umbrella of another company.
Speaker 1: It deserved to be on its own in the market
Speaker 1: where it could really grow. The board of directors of
Speaker 1: eBay initially rejected this proposal in January two fourteen, which
Speaker 1: kind of motivate Icon to start gathering support among shareholders
Speaker 1: to demand the action to create what is called a
Speaker 1: proxy battle, and that could have really set up an
Speaker 1: internal showdown in the company. It was getting pretty ugly. Well.
Speaker 1: September two fourteen is when eBay changed its tune and
Speaker 1: said that the two companies would in fact part ways
Speaker 1: by mid now. Why did the company change its mind, Well,
Speaker 1: one was that wanted to avoid this proxy battle and
Speaker 1: it was coming up on a big annual meeting where
Speaker 1: such a such a battle could have been launched. But
Speaker 1: also the landscape had changed rapidly throughout the year with
Speaker 1: different competing services that we're all about payment processing supported
Speaker 1: by companies like Apple and Ali Baba were popping up
Speaker 1: and cutting into PayPal space. It would be a lot
Speaker 1: easier for PayPal to flourish if it could be its
Speaker 1: own company and compete directly against these services, and eBay
Speaker 1: could benefit from using multiple services, not just PayPal, and
Speaker 1: so the companies kind of hugged it out and they
Speaker 1: went their separate ways. Icon by the way, with with PayPal,
Speaker 1: he swapped out his shares of eBay for an equal
Speaker 1: number of shares and PayPal, So that's kind of what
Speaker 1: he wanted all along. Dan Shulman would be named the
Speaker 1: president and CEO of PayPal, the brand new company. In
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, Donahoe stepped down and Devin Winning would
Speaker 1: take on the role of CEO for eBay. Some people said, well,
Speaker 1: why would Donahoe step down? He had led the company
Speaker 1: so effectively, and you could argue that one reason is
Speaker 1: that up till two thousand fifteen, he was overseeing the
Speaker 1: enormous company that included eBay and PayPal. At two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: PayPal split off, so he would actually be heading up
Speaker 1: a smaller company. It would actually be a step down
Speaker 1: for him from where he had been, and so maybe
Speaker 1: he had done everything he needed to accomplish, and that's
Speaker 1: why he decided to step down as CEO. Devin Winning
Speaker 1: would take over the role. He earned a b a.
Speaker 1: From Union College and a law degree from Columbia University.
Speaker 1: He had acted as CEO of a company called Nastech Pharmaceutical.
Speaker 1: It was a company that his father had founded and
Speaker 1: led until his early passing and when it was still
Speaker 1: in his twenties when he took over that that company.
Speaker 1: He would go on to become an executive for Reuters
Speaker 1: before joining eBay as the president of the Global eBay
Speaker 1: market places back in two thousand eleven and today he
Speaker 1: also serves on the board of directors for General Motors.
Speaker 1: He got elected to that in in September two thousand
Speaker 1: fifth teen, eBay celebrated its twenty years of being a thing,
Speaker 1: It's twentieth anniversary, and in twos sixteen, eBay acquired a
Speaker 1: company called The Expert Maker, which was a virtual reality
Speaker 1: technology company. So I guess we can look forward to
Speaker 1: shopping and virtual stores and malls using eBay as the
Speaker 1: foundation for various businesses. I'm not certain I need that experience,
Speaker 1: as the online approach has worked fine for me. But
Speaker 1: who knows, maybe it will become the next way of
Speaker 1: shopping for stuff. Uh. eBay has also acquired an image
Speaker 1: recognition company called Corrigan, and it also bought an online
Speaker 1: ticket commerce site in Spain called ticket Miss, and there's
Speaker 1: been a recent curfuffle on eBay features meant to create
Speaker 1: incentives for people to buy stuff. Namely, there's this easy
Speaker 1: low Price feature. The idea is that this feature will
Speaker 1: automatically lower the price of an item if no one
Speaker 1: has been on something like if you list an item
Speaker 1: for sale or forbidding and after a certain amount of
Speaker 1: time nothing has happened, it automatically lowers the price for you.
Speaker 1: And some community members felt that this is unfair, it
Speaker 1: will actually hurt them in the long run, it will
Speaker 1: make themselves for stuff then less than what they were
Speaker 1: comfortable doing, and that it really only benefits eBay because
Speaker 1: eBay makes most of its money, or a great deal
Speaker 1: of its money through successful sales, So even if it's
Speaker 1: small successful sales, if there's a lot of them, that
Speaker 1: amounts up to a huge amount. I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: Pierre medi Aer saw when within the first year of
Speaker 1: launching eBay, once he started putting in these fees. A
Speaker 1: report in the UK found that one in three UK
Speaker 1: consumers had mistakenly purchased a counterfeit electrical product online, so
Speaker 1: something that was being marketed as a recognizable brand but
Speaker 1: it turned out that it was a counterfeit uh and
Speaker 1: they purchased these on sites like eBay and also on Amazon,
Speaker 1: so eBay was not alone in this, And there is
Speaker 1: a growing amount of pressure from various consumer groups and
Speaker 1: companies to convince Amazon and eBay and other sites like
Speaker 1: it to really crack down on counterfeiters. And that pretty
Speaker 1: much brings us up to date with what eBay has
Speaker 1: been up to. There's a car lots of other little
Speaker 1: things like features have been rolled out, but that gets
Speaker 1: so granular that I think it's not very interesting. Pierre
Speaker 1: Midi are, the founder of eBay, is still on the
Speaker 1: board of directors. He did recently sell off some of
Speaker 1: his shares in eBay. He spends a great deal of
Speaker 1: his time doing philanthropic work these days. And before I
Speaker 1: go I thought I would list off some of the
Speaker 1: most expensive and some of the strangest things to sell
Speaker 1: on the auction site. And I grab these items from
Speaker 1: various sources, but a lot of them come from eBay itself.
Speaker 1: eBay has a timeline where they kept a record of
Speaker 1: some of the more expensive things that have been purchased
Speaker 1: on the site, and some other places had different things
Speaker 1: listed that We're not on eBay's official list, which makes
Speaker 1: me wonder how how official and real they are. But
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna take it all with a grain
Speaker 1: of salt. So here's a list of some of the
Speaker 1: more expensive things ah that have been sold or auctioned
Speaker 1: off on eBay. There was a baseball card featuring Honus
Speaker 1: hans Wagner, who played primarily for the Pittsburgh Pirates. His
Speaker 1: career stretched from eighteen seven to nineteen seventeen, so this
Speaker 1: is very early and professional baseball. The cards sold for
Speaker 1: one point to seven million dollars. Yikes, yikes. In two
Speaker 1: thousand one, Rob Mitchell coughed up five hundred seventy seven
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for Black Betsy was a baseball bat. Has
Speaker 1: a baseball bat that belonged to Shulis Joe Jackson. Shulis
Speaker 1: Joe Jackson, in case you aren't familiar with that name,
Speaker 1: was one of the players permanently banned from playing professional
Speaker 1: Baseball after the scandal during the nineteen nineteen World Series
Speaker 1: in which several Chicago White Sox players, including Shoelis Joe Jackson,
Speaker 1: conspired with gamblers to throw the series that they were
Speaker 1: having against the Cincinnati Reds, so in other words, to
Speaker 1: lose on purpose. A Gulf Stream to jet sold for
Speaker 1: four point nine million dollars to a charter flight company
Speaker 1: in Africa, so it wasn't sold to an individual but
Speaker 1: rather a company. In two thousand two, one eBay listing
Speaker 1: was for a house that was built inside an old
Speaker 1: missile silo that was constructed during the Cold War. The
Speaker 1: house sold for two point one million dollars. There was
Speaker 1: an in Zo Ferrari, of which only three hundred ninety
Speaker 1: nine were ever made. It went up for auction in
Speaker 1: two thousand four and sold for more than a million dollars.
Speaker 1: The original Hollywood sign, if you're familiar with that, that's
Speaker 1: on the Hollywood Hills. The original sign was replaced back
Speaker 1: in ninety eight, and the original letters, which are fifty
Speaker 1: ft tall, went up for sale in two thousand five
Speaker 1: and sold for four hundred fifty thousand dollars. There was
Speaker 1: the gig yacht that I mentioned earlier in a previous episode,
Speaker 1: it's still a top item. In fact, depending upon the
Speaker 1: sourcer looking at it is the most expensive thing that
Speaker 1: has ever been sold on eBay. It was a fifty
Speaker 1: percent down payment on eBay and that ended up being
Speaker 1: eighty five million dollars. And as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: it's for a boat that has yet to have been
Speaker 1: built it it still doesn't really exist other than in
Speaker 1: concept form. That sale happened back in two thousand six.
Speaker 1: Also in two thousand six, a chunk of meteorite from
Speaker 1: Mars sold for four d fifty thousand dollars. It had
Speaker 1: crashed in Nigeria. Back in nineteen sixty two, there was
Speaker 1: a bottle of Samuel Alsop's Arctic Ale that was brewed
Speaker 1: especially for the nineteenth century explorer Sir Edward Belcher for
Speaker 1: his visit to the Arctic, because he wanted a beer
Speaker 1: that wouldn't freeze in Arctic temperatures. It sold for five
Speaker 1: hundred three thousand dollars. A bottle of beer for five
Speaker 1: hundred three thousand dollars. Thank goodness, it wasn't a six pack.
Speaker 1: Right At Kate Middleton's wedding to Prince William of England,
Speaker 1: Princess Beatrice wore a hat that I can only describe
Speaker 1: as totally hideous. What do I know, I'm not a
Speaker 1: royalty I got I got no noble blood in me.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this monstrosity, and you really need to look
Speaker 1: at a picture of this. In fact, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to show Tari a picture of Princess Beatrice's hat when
Speaker 1: this episode is over. It's sold for eighty one English pounds.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand eleven, oh during a charity auction,
Speaker 1: eBay offered up the chance to have lunch with Warren Buffett,
Speaker 1: and this has become an annual event since then. And
Speaker 1: the initial lunch sold for three point four million dollars
Speaker 1: and no telling that actually included dessert or not. In
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, an Italian village called pratt O Richia,
Speaker 1: which was nearly vacant, it was almost abandoned, had been
Speaker 1: auctioned off for three point one million dollars. It is
Speaker 1: not the only town that has gone up for auction
Speaker 1: on eBay. Others include Albert, Texas and Bridgeville, California. Also
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve, a letter written by Albert Einstein
Speaker 1: sold for three million dollars on eBay. The winning bidder
Speaker 1: was a philosopher named Eric good Kind or good Kind,
Speaker 1: more likely because of the spelling of that name. A
Speaker 1: lot that contained six d seventy five vintage lunch boxes
Speaker 1: dating as far back as the nineteen fifties sold for
Speaker 1: one point seven million dollars in September two thousand thirteen.
Speaker 1: So someone really likes their lunch boxes. The car featured
Speaker 1: at the end of the nineteen seventy eight film Greece
Speaker 1: sold for one eighty thousand dollars in February fourteen. And
Speaker 1: a copy of Action Comics number one, which was the
Speaker 1: first appearance of Superman. It originally sold for ten cents
Speaker 1: when it came out in nineteen thirty eight. This new
Speaker 1: or not new, but this, this well preserved copy of
Speaker 1: Action Comics number one, sold for three point two million
Speaker 1: dollars in an auction in August. Here's some other stuff
Speaker 1: I found while looking for weird things that have been
Speaker 1: up for auction. Now these are from other sites, not
Speaker 1: just eBay's official timeline. So again I wasn't able to
Speaker 1: confirm all of these actually happened, but they're reported widely,
Speaker 1: so take it with a grain of salt Justin Timberlake's
Speaker 1: half eaten fringe toast. Some fan was able to get
Speaker 1: hold of the leftovers that Justin Timberlake left behind after
Speaker 1: eating French toast, and it sold for more than a
Speaker 1: grand In two thousand you a corn flake that vaguely
Speaker 1: resembled the shape of Illinois went up for auction once.
Speaker 1: Various haunted dolls have been sold on eBay. All fans
Speaker 1: of the podcast of My Brother, My Brother and Me
Speaker 1: can attest to this, as they do a Haunted Dolls
Speaker 1: segment occasionally on their show. A derrito chip said to
Speaker 1: be in the shape of the Pope's hat went on
Speaker 1: sale on an eBay auction. Uh, and I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: they all kind of are the shape of a pope's hat.
Speaker 1: There was a cemetery plot that went up for auction
Speaker 1: on eBay, A special cemetery plot in California, located near
Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe's grave. It was actually occupied. It was not
Speaker 1: an empty plot when I went up for sale. Was
Speaker 1: occupied by Richard Poncher, whose widow decided to put the
Speaker 1: plot up for sales an above ground plot so they
Speaker 1: didn't have to dig anybody up but they decided. The
Speaker 1: widow decided she was going to sell the plot to
Speaker 1: someone on an auction and move her husband's remains to
Speaker 1: somewhere else. It sold for four point six million dollars,
Speaker 1: according to Time, and she had decided to do this
Speaker 1: in order to pay the mortgage on her Beverly Hills
Speaker 1: home and then move somewhere else. Uh. Also, once upon
Speaker 1: a time a user put up for sale or for
Speaker 1: for auction, the Meaning of Life, not the Monty Python movie,
Speaker 1: but this person said that he had supposedly discovered what
Speaker 1: the true meaning of life was and he was ready
Speaker 1: to auction it off to the highest bidder. The highest
Speaker 1: bidder paid the prinsle Lie sum of three dollars and
Speaker 1: twenty six cents. And I suppose they've kept the secret
Speaker 1: because it was hard earned. For less than five bucks.
Speaker 1: They got the meaning of life, apparently, And that wraps
Speaker 1: up this discussion about eBay. It was a lot of
Speaker 1: fun to look into this company, and I learned a
Speaker 1: lot going through it, especially about the very uh bold
Speaker 1: moves that various eBay executives have made throughout its history,
Speaker 1: both to great effect and sometimes too great detriment. UH.
Speaker 1: Really kind of a fascinating story overall, and Pierre made Are,
Speaker 1: who launched the whole thing, seems like he he's a
Speaker 1: pretty cool guy. UM definitely someone who really believes in
Speaker 1: giving back to communities. He has done an awful lot
Speaker 1: of conservation work in Hawaii as well, and I find
Speaker 1: that really admirable. So fascinating story. I can't wait to
Speaker 1: look at the next company history. I haven't quite decided
Speaker 1: which company I'm going to focus on next. I want
Speaker 1: to do a couple of episodes that are not company
Speaker 1: focused before I do another story of series because it
Speaker 1: gets pretty long having to do three or four episodes
Speaker 1: about the same subject. So I'm gonna mix it up
Speaker 1: a little bit over the next couple. I hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoy it. And uh, I hope you guys are
Speaker 1: ready to let me know what you want to hear.
Speaker 1: Send me a message, tell me about any tech companies
Speaker 1: or products or trends, or maybe there's a person in
Speaker 1: tech you would like me to focus on. Send me
Speaker 1: a message. The email address is tech Stuff at house
Speaker 1: touff Works dot com, or drop me a line on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff H. S W. Don't forget to follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, because
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com