A relative senior citizen in internet terms, eBay is celebrating its 25th birthday today. Started in the age when Yahoo was the primary search engine and most people still had dial-up internet access, eBay has survived challenges from Amazon and Etsy, continuing to fill a niche in e-commerce.
September 3, 1995: eBay, then known as AuctionWeb, launches on the internet. Its first sale: a broken laser pointer for $14.83, and yes, the buyer knew it was broken.
January 1997: The platform completes 200,000 in the month. By comparison, through all of 1996, eBay had 250,000 sales.
September 21, 1998: eBay goes public, making its IPO at $18 per share; it closed at $53.50 per share that day. At its 20th birthday, eBay calculated that a $1,000 investment in its IPO would’ve been worth $18,000 after 20 years.
2000: eBay has the largest user base of any ecommerce site, with 12 million users and 4.5 million items on sale.
October 3, 2002: eBay buys PayPal for $1.5 billion.
September 2005: eBay buys Skype for $2.6 billion.
2014: eBay exceeds $45 billion in assets.
July 18, 2015: eBay completes spin off PayPal.
April 27, 2020 Jamie Iannone become the CEO of eBay.
After divesting a number of assets and investment, eBay currently has a $18 billion in total assets and 13,000 employees. Its market cap is $38.5 billion.