Company History, Product And Services Ebay

Company History, Product and Services Ebay was Founded in September 1995 by Pierre Midair in his San Jose living room (Bosons 2001), he created a flea market in cyberspace when launched online auction service Auction Web. Making a name for itself largely through word of mouth, the company incorporated in 1996, the same year it began to charge a fee to auction items online. The company changed the name to eBay in 1997 and began promoting itself through advertising.

By the middle of that year, eBay was boasting nearly 800,000 auctions each day and Benchmark Capital came on board as a significant uncial backer. In early 1998 Margaret Whitman, a former Hasher executive, replaced Midair as CEO in early 1998, later the same year EBay made a blockbuster debut as a public company. The company moved closer to household name status by launching a national advertising campaign and inking alliance deals with AOL and WebTV. Bay showed its acquisitive streak in 1999 with purchases of Land (online auctions in Germany) and Ballpoint (person-to-person credit card technology). It also made one of its first investments in an outside company with the purchase of 6% of Tradeoff. Mom, an online seller of corporate surplus materials. The company set the jewel in its 1999 acquisition crown when it acquired upscale auction house Butterflies & Butterflies now known as (Battlefields). EBay also expanded down under through a Joint venture with Australia-based score (formerly PL Online).

In 2000 eBay agreed to develop person-to-person and merchant-to-person auction sites for Disney's GO Network, began distributing information through wireless products, and Joined with banking giant Wells Fargo to offer eBay sellers the option of accepting online checks. Also in 2000 the company expanded into Japan through eBay Japan, with computer firm NECK acquiring 30% of the Japanese subsidiary and eBay owning the rest; it also launched Canadian and Austrian sites. In addition, eBay took an equity stake in online used-car dealer Outraced. Mom and launched a co- branded used-car auction website, and it acquired online trading community Half. Com. EBay strengthened its European position in 2001 through the purchase of French Internet auction firm 'Bazaar. It also launched sites in Ireland, New Zealand, and Switzerland. EBay made a deal that year to provide its e-commerce capabilities o Microsoft developers and to add business-to-business auctions to its consumer operations. In addition, the company began offering virtual storefronts for retailers to sell fixed-price items and purchased auctioneer of foreclosed property, Homesteader. Amazon. Com was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bozos.

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After months of preparation, he launched a website in July 1995 (Douglas Hovercraft's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies was its first sale); it had sales of $20,000 a week by September. Bozos and his team kept working with the site, pioneering features that now seem mundane, such as one-click shopping, customer reviews, and e-mail order verification. Amazon went public in 1997. Moves to cement the Amazon. Com brand included becoming the sole book retailer on All's website and Netscape commercial channel. In 1998 the company launched its online music and video stores, and it began to sell toys and electronics.

Amazon also expand Its European reach Walt ten purchases AT online booksellers in the UK and Germany, and it acquired the Internet Movie Database. Bozos also expanded the company's base of online services, buying Jungle (comparison shopping) and Placental (address book, calendar, reminders). By midyear Amazon. Com had attracted so much attention that its market capitalization equaled the combined values of profitable bricks-and-mortar rivals Barnes ; Noble and Borders Group, even though their combined sales were far greater than the upstart's.

Late that year Amazon formed a promotional link with Hover's, publisher of this profile. After raising $1. 25 billion in a bond offering early in 1999, Amazon. Com began a spending spree with deals to buy all or part of several dot-combs. However, some have since been sold (Homegrown. Com) and others have gone out of business or bankrupt Pets. Com, living. Mom (furniture). It also bought the catalog businesses of Back to Basics and Tool Crib of the North. Amazon. Com began conducting online auctions in early 1999 and partnered with venerable auction house Soother's.

Also that year Amazon added distribution facilities, including one each in England and Germany. Amazon is the highest-grossing online retailer in the world with $48. 1 billion in net sales in 2011, or approximately 7% of the $680 billion global e- commerce market. Media represented 7% of sales in 2011, and electronics and general merchandise represented 60% of sales. The remaining 3% was derived from o-branded credit cards, fulfillment operations, and cloud computing services. Outside the U. S. , Amazon operates sites in Canada, the U. K. , Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and China.

International sales represented 45% of sales in 2011. Question 3 New Events Amazon has stepped up its physical and e-book publishing activities. Signaling an increased interest in content production, Amazon in 2012 acquired the publication rights to more than 3,000 backlash titles from Valor Books, which will be published under the West Coast imprints of Amazon Publishing alongside Montreal Romance and Thomas & Mercer. Amazon become a book publisher with five imprints, including Necromancers and Montreal, in late 2010 when it purchased the publication rights of about 120 fiction and translated titles published by The Toby Press.

Under the terms of the deal, the company's Necromancers and Micromanaging publishing imprints will release The Toby Press titles in print and Kindle editions for sale on Amazon's websites and at bookstores in the US, the I-J, and Germany. Previous purchases made to strengthen its Kindle business include Touch, a manufacturer of touch screens (in early 2010), and the digital daybooks publisher Audible for bout $300 million in 2008. To grow its customer base and sales channels, Amazon spent a total of $771 million on acquisitions at home and abroad in 2011.

It purchased UK-based online bookseller The Book Depository in the fall. The Book Depository was founded by Andrew Crawford, a former Amazon. Co. UK employee, and acquiring it strengthened Amazon's market share in the I-J and bolstered its position in the e-book market. Raising its entertainment stakes in Europe. Also acquired the remaining shares it did not already own in Lovelier International, which streams video and rents DVD's by mail to customers in the I-J, Germany, Denmark, Norway, ND Sweden (like Nettling in the US). Amazon previously held a 42% stake in Lovelier.

I en deal was announced mall rumblings Trot Hollywood stunt's Tanat Amazon will roll out an Internet movie subscription operation to rival Nettling, so Amazon could make use of Loveliness technology in that pursuit. Amazon could also use its Hollywood connections to expand Loveliness video offerings and grow its market share in Europe. At home in the US, the company purchased Wood Inc. , an early entrant into the social shopping e-commerce niche in 2010. Dallas-based Wood operates as an independent subsidiary of its parent. It also acquired Squids, the owner of online shopping sites Diapers. Com and Soap. Mom for $500 million in cash and $45 million in debt. Diapers. Com sells baby care products and Soap. Com sells everyday essentials. Both companies operate as independent units and retain their current executive leadership teams. Looking to improve its automation fulfillment centers, as well as cut processing times and personnel costs, Amazon in 2012 acquired Massachusetts-based Kava Systems, a warehouse technology company, for around $775 million. Meanwhile, in 2011 Amazon gave in to increasing pressure from Tate legislatures and its brick-and-mortar rivals to begin collecting sales tax on its online sales.

After pitched battles in several states, including Texas and California, the company agreed to begin collecting taxes in The Golden State in 2012. To boost membership in its Prime shipping and customer loyalty program (launched in 2005), Amazon has struck a deal with Discovery Communications. Discovery has agreed to sell the online-streaming rights to some of its older programming, including episodes of the popular shows "Dirty Jobs" and "Whale Wars," to Amazon's online-streaming arrive.

Amazon's Instant Video streaming service is a distant second to Neckline, with more than 21 million subscribers vs.. Only about 5 million for Amazon. In the past few years eBay spent about $5 billion on technology related acquisitions. In 2010 eBay acquired popular German shopping site Friendliness for about $200 million. It made the deal to become a leading online fashion destination in Europe. The company continued its shopping spree in Germany the following year when it bolstered Papal assets by acquiring the German company Failsafe, adding over 1 5 lion accounts.

The deal gave eBay purchase-on-invoice capabilities that are popular to merchants and consumers in Austria, German, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. EBay bought mobile software application developer Critical Path in 2010. Critical Path had worked with eBay to develop several of its applications for Apple's phone. The acquisition doubled the size of eBay's mobile team, which is working to capitalize on the growing numbers of consumers who are shopping on their smart phones. In its largest acquisition since purchasing Keep, in 2011 eBay bought SSL

Commerce, a provider of such services as website development and maintenance, order fulfillment, and digital advertising, for $2. 4 billion.. The purchase not only improved eBay's Marketplaces business, but it also extended its relationships with larger retailers. SSL clients included Aids, Calvin Klein, Betsey Johnson, and Kenneth Cole. Other recent acquisitions include Hunch, which provides recommendations based on shopping data; Magenta, a provider for software for creating e-commerce systems; Mill, a local shopping engine; and Red Laser, which enables smartness to scan bar codes for product

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