I can't believe how greedy ebay and paypal have become.

kangoora

IMO you will never see sites like Ebay, Amazon rise to the size they are now ever again, unless governments around the world start restricting the virtual monopolies that the big players now have created for themselves. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Ebay, Facebook (possibly), Apple, Alibaba - any time a company now comes along with a unique business idea that could fit into the portfolio of one of the giants it just gets bought out by them. They think nothing much of bunging £1bn at a company founder to take over a potential competitor and incorporating the product into their offerings - and how many people turn down even £100m, let alone £1bn.

You may get the very, very rare holdout who refuses to sell and then goes on to be a global tech giant but they are going to be very much the exception and not the rule moving forward unless things change.

RFW

kangoora said:

IMO you will never see sites like Ebay, Amazon rise to the size they are now ever again, unless governments around the world start restricting the virtual monopolies that the big players now have created for themselves. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Ebay, Facebook (possibly), Apple, Alibaba - any time a company now comes along with a unique business idea that could fit into the portfolio of one of the giants it just gets bought out by them. They think nothing much of bunging £1bn at a company founder to take over a potential competitor and incorporating the product into their offerings - and how many people turn down even £100m, let alone £1bn.

You may get the very, very rare holdout who refuses to sell and then goes on to be a global tech giant but they are going to be very much the exception and not the rule moving forward unless things change.

Others will come along at some point, just like Amazon et al did. It may well be in a different area but it will happen.

Amazon don't just buy companies, they invest in them. They've recently bought a small share in Deliveroo.

On another point Ebay isn't in the same division as the other companies. All you mention, apart from Alibaba ($400+ bn) have a net worth of over $1 trillion dollars, Ebay is about $36 billion. Paypal is just over $200billion.

forgotmyname

Yahoo auctions were great, if someone sniped just before the end the auction it would add extra time, good when selling
but not so good when buying.    

I was on Yahoo auctions long before ebay also.  They shutdown the auctions in the UK pushing ebay as the best alternative.
They still operate in Japan.

Ebay were certainly not the first online auction.

theorville

forgotmyname said:

Yahoo auctions were great, if someone sniped just before the end the auction it would add extra time, good when selling
but not so good when buying.    

I was on Yahoo auctions long before ebay also.  They shutdown the auctions in the UK pushing ebay as the best alternative.
They still operate in Japan.

Ebay were certainly not the first online auction.

"Yahoo! Auctions is a service set up by the online search giant Yahoo! in 1998 to compete against eBay.[2]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Auctions
"eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay

soolin

theorville said:

forgotmyname said:

Yahoo auctions were great, if someone sniped just before the end the auction it would add extra time, good when selling
but not so good when buying.    

I was on Yahoo auctions long before ebay also.  They shutdown the auctions in the UK pushing ebay as the best alternative.
They still operate in Japan.

Ebay were certainly not the first online auction.

"Yahoo! Auctions is a service set up by the online search giant Yahoo! in 1998 to compete against eBay.[2]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Auctions
"eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay

EBay.com was early, however eBay UK did not come into existence until 1999 by which time many of us were already selling happily on other sites. EBay.com decided to spread to new markets , like the UK, and either bought out or knocked out many auctions that had been successfully trading before eBay was well known in the UK. 

forgotmyname

Yes ebay.com were before Yahoo, but as Soolin said ebay didnt come to the UK until fairly late. Computing was starting to
take a big upturn around that time.

Onsale were just before ebay, but there were auctions long before those. Compuserve anyone?

soolin

forgotmyname said:

Yes ebay.com were before Yahoo, but as Soolin said ebay didnt come to the UK until fairly late. Computing was starting to
take a big upturn around that time.

Onsale were just before ebay, but there were auctions long before those. Compuserve anyone?

My goodness , some of these names are really bringing back memories. I remember no photos, no postage shown, waiting for cheques in the post that sometimes never arrived! 

forgotmyname

AOL 2.5 and other ISP's in a folder on the desktop with windows 95.  

soolin

forgotmyname said:

AOL 2.5 and other ISP's in a folder on the desktop with windows 95.  

I remember 1p a minute on dial up Internet !

liggerz87

I didnt use auctions like ebay till 2007 i do remember get off the phone im trying to use the Internet lol