Amaya Toman Today, eBay is one of the largest online auction "marketplaces" in the world. The beginnings of this platform date back to the mid-nineties of the last century, when Pierre Omidyar launched a site with the telling name Auction Web.
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Pierre Omidyar was born in 1967 in Paris, but later moved with his parents to Baltimore, Maryland. Even as a teenager he was interested in computers and computer technology. During his studies at Tufts University, he developed a program for memory management on a Macintosh, and a little later he ventured into the waters of e-commerce, when his e-shop concept even caught the attention of experts at Microsoft. But in the end, Omidyar settled on designing websites. There is a story connected with the beginnings of the server, according to which Omidyar's girlfriend at the time, who was a passionate collector of the aforementioned PEZ candy containers, was troubled by the fact that she could practically not come across people with a similar hobby on the Internet. According to the story, Omidyar decided to help her in this direction and created a network for her and like-minded enthusiasts to meet each other. The story eventually turned out to be fabricated, but it had a significant impact on raising awareness of eBay.
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The network was launched in September 1995 and was a very free platform without any guarantees, fees or integrated payment options. According to Omidyar, he was pleasantly shocked by how many items were collected on the network - among the first auctioned items was, for example, a laser pointer, the price of which rose to less than fifteen dollars in a virtual auction. In just five months, the site became a trading platform where members had to pay a small fee to place advertisements. But the growth of eBay definitely did not stop there, and the platform got its first employee, who was Chris Agarpao.
In 1996, the company concluded its first contract with a third party, thanks to which tickets and other products related to tourism began to be sold on the website. In January 1997, 200 auctions took place on the server. The official renaming from Auction Web to eBay took place at the beginning of 1997. A year later, thirty employees already worked for eBay, the server could boast of half a million users and an income of 4,7 million dollars in the United States. eBay gradually acquired a number of smaller companies and platforms, or parts of them. eBay currently boasts 182 million users worldwide. During the fourth quarter of 2019, goods worth 22 billion dollars were sold here, 71% of goods are delivered free of charge.
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Pavel Jelic 