Pierre Omidyar founded eBay in 1995 under the name AuctionWeb. The first item he listed for sale was a broken laser printer he sold to Canadian Mark Fraser for $14.83. In the next year, AuctionWeb would facilitate $7.2 million in merchandise transactions.
Also in 1996, AuctionWeb brought on Jeff Skoll as president and opened an office in San Jose, California. The company officially changed its name to eBay in 1997. The leadership team expanded again in 1998 with the hiring of now-famous tech CEO Meg Whitman.
In the ensuing years, eBay would evolve through expansions, acquisitions, partnerships, divestitures, and spin-offs to become the company it is today. Significant milestones included:
- Acquisition of peer-to-peer trading site Up4Sale in 1998
- Expansion into Germany, Australia, and the U.K. in 1999
- Launch of the "Buy it Now" feature in 2000
- Acquisition of PayPal (PYPL -0.50%) in 2002
- Acquisition of Rent.com in 2004
- Acquisition of Skype in 2005
- Acquisition of StubHub in 2007
- Acquisition of BillMeLater in 2008
- Sale of 70% of Skype ownership in 2009
- Acquisition of Milo.com in 2010
- Sale of Rent.com in 2012
- Partnership with Sotheby's to sell fine art in 2014