EBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar a Paris native in his San Jose living room back in September 1995. It was from the beginning meant to be a marketplace for the sale of goods and services to individuals, which to some extent, is still is today.



In 1998, Pierre Omidyar and co-founder Jeff Skoll brought in a woman called Meg Whitman to mastermind the auction site's continuing expansion.

Meg Whitman who studied at the Harvard Business School had previously worked for the Stride Rite Corporation, a footwear company, in various capacities.

Meg Whiteman was also employed by the Walt Disney Company, an entertainment company, most recently as senior vice president, marketing, Disney Consumer Products, she was also at Bain & Co, a consulting firm and other reputable firms, but we will not go into much detail.

Credit must be given to Meg Whitman for beating back three tough competitors, Amazon.com, Yahoo and Lycos who tried to knock the site from its perch.

From its flea market - like roots, the site now host auctions for big-ticket items such as automobiles and real estate. The site has not just weathered the storm – it is steaming full speed ahead.

The online auction site has built a strong online presence, it has been through some though times since its inception, but that seems to make eBay even stronger. For those of you that have still not heard about eBay, it is an online auction website, and it is not just any auction site, but the biggest in the world. If you know how an offline auction works, then you already have an idea about how eBay works.

Most people are turning to eBay for their online shopping needs. The auction site has made it easy for shoppers with its user-friendly search facility. Just type the name of whatever product you are after and eBay searches through its various categories and comes up with various links relating to the product in that category. Click the link, and you are on your way to your very first purchase on eBay. It is that easy. And it is for this reason, most shoppers keep going back to eBay, not just for bargains, but because the auction site has a user friendly interface and it is easy to navigate, even for the novice Internet user.

EBay has built an online person - person trading community on the internet, using the World Wide Web. Buyers and Sellers are brought together in a manner where sellers are permitted to list items for sale, buyers to bid on items of interest and all members to browse through listed items in a fully automated way. These items are arranged by topics, where each type of auction has its own category.

The site has spawned a whole industry of programs and websites catering to online auction buyers and sellers. You can find help to list, buy, pay or sell. These days, selling on the site has become a full time job for many people. Some sellers consistently make more than $150,000.00 in monthly sales and there are over 260,000 people selling on the auction site and this figure keeps growing by the day.

Copyright © David Nettey