An Unenviable Track Record: One Bad Acquisition After Another For Ebay

[xppman]

What can anyone expect?
In the last few years IMO Meg and team have turned many golden eggs into Sh............IT.

Anyone care to elaborate on any other high dollar flops
Meg's acquisition teams has purchased that just aren't panning out?

[mandy]

Anyone care to elaborate on any other high dollar flops
Meg's acquisition teams has purchased

Flashback in time 

May 18, 1999

eBay made two acquisitions today using its high-priced stock as currency, scooping up a credit card payment firm and a company in the auto collectibles market ...

The San Jose, California, company said it would issue shares worth a total of $275 million for Billpoint and Kruse International,...

http://news.com.com/2100-1017-226031.html

June 13, 2000

eBay to acquire Half.com in stock deal

eBay said late Tuesday that it will acquire Half.com in a stock deal signaling the online auctioneer's first foray into a fixed-price business model.

eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) said it will issue between 4.6 million and 5.5 million shares for all outstanding shares of Half.com.

eBay shares closed up 1 3/16 to 68 ahead of the announcement.

http://news.com.com/eBay+to+acquire+Half...62951.html

Not an acquisiition but...February 28, 2000

eBay Inc. the world's leading online person-to-person trading community, today announced
the launch of its Japanese site (http://www.ebayjapan.co.jp).  The site, up and
running today, is in Japanese, lists items in yen and offers users over
800 merchandise categories, ranging from local favorites such as
"Hello Kitty", Pokemon and pottery, to popular international categories
including computers, electronics and Asian antique

"We feel that the launch of eBay Japan is a milestone in the company's
international expansion, bringing the excitement and fun of the online auction
format to the world's second biggest Internet market," said Merle Okawara,
president of eBay Japan

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=105&STORY=/www/story/02-28-2000/0001151166

[bargainbloodhound]

We feel that the launch of eBay Japan is a milestone in the company's international expansion

It was definitely a milestone, just not the type they were hoping for. 

eBay exits Japan,moves into Taiwan - February 26, 2002

eBay to acquire Half.com in stock deal

They spent $350 million and its been all down hill since then.  Half was a great site before eBay's programmers and management got their hands on it.

eBay's Half.com integration hits snags - March 22, 2002
eBay to close Half.com - March 6, 2003
Half.com to continue at full speed - September 24, 2004
...see the new half.com boards on eBay to see eBay's latest Half screwup (a glitch ridden revamp of the site introduced October 20th)

Billpoint

I always hated Billpoint.

Billpoint failure a lesson for eBay? – July 8, 2002
eBay maps out Billpoint's demise – December 16, 2002

FYI, eBay paid $125 million for Billpoint and $150 million for Kruse which they sold off about the same time they shut down Billpoint.  Kruses's sales were in a tailspin when eBay dumped it.

[stardust]

And don't forget the supposed *partnerships* with Sotheby's and Butterfield's that happened at about the same time frame as the Kruse debacle.

I don't use ebay Motors, but I understand it's just about down the tubes because of the extreme fraud across the board...Yikes!!

[xppman]

You guys have a lot more knowledge about the feebay history than I.

I only got involved in trying to get ebay to do the right thing
after ebay purchased PP and the logos showed up all over the place.

It was a fruitless effort indeed because as usual, the arrogance of ebays management
came to the forefront.

I never used BillPoint. I saw the handwriting on the wall and refused to have all my eggs in one basket
just like many others did. This is what made PayPal grow so fast and WAS the sellers and buyers choice I think.

Then low and behold feebay buys them and all of our accounts to boot.
That pissed me off to no end.

I can come up with only one reason why the government allowed this transaction to go through in the first place. Many officials wallets were padded by ebay lobbyist IMO.

As we can see now... feebay has screwed up yet another
great service that was pretty darn good.

They were smart enough to see an opportunity for the future but too dumb to all the lawsuits coming their way.
The original owners / founders saw it...  and that is why they sold it.
Maybe Meg can file a SNAD complaint.

[mandy]

I split this topic.  The first 5 posts in this thread were originally part of the Dark Clouds Over Skype thread http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...471.0.html