Company Description
eBay Inc. was formed as a sole proprietorship in September 1995 and was incorporated in California in May 1996. In April 1998, the Company reincorporated in Delaware, and in September 1998, it completed the initial public offering. eBay provides online marketplaces for the sale of goods and services as well as other online commerce, or ecommerce, platforms, online payment solutions and online communications offerings to a diverse community of individuals and businesses. The Company operates three business segments: Marketplaces, Payments and Communications. The Marketplaces segment is comprised of online commerce platforms that enable a global community of buyers and sellers to interact and trade with one another. It provides the infrastructure to enable global online commerce on a variety of platforms, including the traditional eBay.com platform, its other online platforms, such as online classifieds businesses, secondary tickets marketplace, online shopping comparison website, apartment listing service platform, as well as its fixed price media marketplace. The Company's Payments segment is comprised of its online payment solutions PayPal and Bill Me Later. Its Communications segment, which consists of Skype, enables VoIP calls between Skype users and provides low-cost connectivity to traditional fixed-line and mobile telephones. eBay encounters competition in its businesses from numerous sources. It competes on the basis of price, product selection, and services. The Company is subject to laws relating to the collection, use, retention, security and transfer of personally identifiable information about its users, especially for financial information and for users located outside of the U.S.
BUSINESS SUMMARY
eBay Inc. and its subsidiaries provide online marketplaces for the sale of goods and services, online payments services, and online communication offerings to individuals and businesses in the United States and internationally. It operates in three segments: Marketplaces, Payments, and Communications. The Marketplaces segment provides online commerce platforms that enable buyers and sellers to interact and trade with one another. It enables online commerce through various platforms, including the traditional eBay.com platform and other online platforms, such as StubHub, Kijiji, Den Bla Avis, Gumtree.com, LoQUo.com, OpusForum, Marktplaats.nl, and mobile.de, as well as Half.com, Rent.com, and Shopping.com. This segment also provides various services, including feedback forum, safe harbor program, verified rights owner program, loyalty programs, customer support, and tools and services. The Payments segment offers PayPal, a payments platform that enables individuals or businesses with an email address to send and receive payments online. Its services include joining the network, verification of its PayPal’s account holders, withdrawing money, and trust and safety programs, including PayPal’s seller protection and buyer protection programs. This segment also provides Bill Me Later, a payment solution, which offers transactional credit at the point of sale for the U.S. online consumers. The Communications segment consists of Skype, an Internet communication product, which enables voice over Internet protocol communications between Skype users, as well as provides Skype users connectivity to traditional fixed-line and mobile telephones. This segment offers its software in approximately 28 languages. The company was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.
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