eBay

An Australian police remanded a 35-year-old man from the country town of Castlemaine in Victoria for making an order of bomb-making equipment on eBay at an amount of $AU17,000.

Talking at the Bendigo Magistrates Court, Phillip Marsh explained that his aim was to “make fireworks” out of his purchased materials that included potassium nitrate, charcoal powder, sulphur, detonator cord, and military paraphernalia including anti-personnel mines.

eBay’s online payment processor PayPal is moving offline, said Chief Executive John Donahoe in the wake of presenting quarterly results on Wednesday.

"We intend to help retailers grow their businesses offline in the same way we helped merchants grow online," Donahoe said during a conference call with analysts.

PayPal will be testing "point-of-sale innovation" with a major U.S. retailer by the end of this year, he added.

European Union court ruled this week that eBay might become liable for trademark infringements made by its users who sell counterfeit goods under the established global brands if the ecommerce giant is found playing active role in this.

The auction site may also have to actively monitor its customers to ensure their offers for sale are lawful, the court ruled.

Ecommerce giant eBay announced that it completed the acquisition of GSI Commerce reported back in March. eBay has purchased all outstanding shares of GSI at $29.25 pher share in cash, adding up to about $2.4 billion.

GSI Commerce will continue to operate as a separate business from eBay, and will be led by Chris Saridakis as its newly appointed president. He will report directly to John Donahoe, eBay’s President and CEO.

An ecommerce giant eBay is looking for more acquisitions to tap into the image recognition and augmented reality market as it is significantly losing to its rival Amazon.

Amazon.com has already adopted image recognition which allows users to shot an object with their camera or phone and send image to the website and find a match in the online store and buy it within seconds.

Microsoft is about to finalize a deal to purchase Internet phone company Skype Technologies for more than US$7 billion, reports the Wall Street Journal. The deal may be announced today.

With the acquisition Microsoft would have a recognized brand name on the Internet just in time as it is struggling to have more share in the consumer market, The Wall Street Journal said in a report late Monday.

Microsoft and Skype could not be immediately reached for comment. Both companies declined to comment to the WSJ.

The first quarter turned profitable for eBay who makes every effort to make its marketplaces more attractive to online shoppers. More people were purchasing items on the ecommerce site and more merchants used its PayPal payment system.

The first quarter revenue increased by 15.9% to $2.55 billion supported by a 23% growth at PayPal and a 12% rise at its marketplaces, says eBay.

EBay is in the final stages of a three-year plan to revitalize its marketplaces unit, whose growth had slowed.

An ecommerce giant eBay plans to purchase Where, a company that provides local advertising to mobile phones.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed by eBay but it said that it expects to close it in the second quarter of 2011. The purchase would not affect the results of the earlier forecast, said the company in a blog post announcement.

eBay believes the deal would enhance its ability to connect retailers and shoppers.

eBay Inc plans to purchase most of the stake in a Turkish auction website GittiGidiyor as a part of its move to strengthen its main business. The US-based ecommerce giant bought a minority stake in Istanbul-based GittiGidiyor in 2007 and said on Tuesday that it would buy more shares to raise its ownership to 93 percent. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deals comes two weeks after the company announced its plans to buy e-commerce service provider GSI Commerce for $2 billion, a deal seen as an attempt to rival No. 1 Web retailer Amazon.com Inc.

Facebook, Google, eBay and 23 more online companies joined under the common name French Association of Internet Community Services (L’Asssociation des Services Internet Communautaires) or ASIC to file a suit against French government this Wednesday. According to the official statement the online giants try to prevent adoption of a regulation forcing them to store user data for 12 months.

eBay reported that resellers are making fortunes on listing Apple’s iPad 2 on the auction site because they set the selling prices as high as 53% above retail.

The company released stats this week that show the average selling price of a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2 since its launch three weeks ago has been $697, $198 over Apple's retail price. That represents a profit of 40%.

Meantime, the average auction price of the 64GB Wi-Fi model has reached $963, or 53% above retail, while the 64GB Wi-Fi/3G iPad 2 averaged $1,235, 49% higher than the list price of $829.

eBay Inc has made a takeover offering to an ecommerce service provider GSI Commerce, a deal that may rival Amazon.com Inc. The online auction company wants to purchase GSI for a price of $1.96 billion.

This week eBay offered GSI shareholders $29.25 per share in cash, a premium of 50.9 percent from the stock's closing price on Friday.

"It's one of the few fulfillment operations that could rival Amazon," BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis said. "Amazon is fulfilling its third-party sellers more and more. eBay is all third-party sellers."

eBay is launching new initiative to allow sellers to offer as many as 50 items per month without charging them a listing fee. The program comes into effect starting next month.

The pricing is effecting as of April 19 and follows similar incentives promoted in 2010 for attracting new sellers and new listings to eBay's auction website.

The company estimated last month that the marketplaces unit is set to grow into a $7 billion to $8 billion business by 2013 from $5.7 billion in 2010. It is targeting total revenue to reach $13 billion to $15 billion by 2013.
 

One of the largest online payment systems PayPal, owned by eBay has announced creation of 200 new jobs to expand its services in Ireland and Athlone, 150 and 50 accordingly. The online payment processor said that they are looking for people to work to work in customer service and merchant services. All the candidates are required to be fluent in English and a second European language.

eBay is expanding its mobile reach in Europe through a deal with Telefonica which will equip the ecommerce giant with most smartphones and feature phones sold by the Telefonica via its O2 brand with eBay’s mobile app or a link to eBay’s mobile page pre-loaded.

The agreement includes most Android, Windows 7, Symbian and Bada devices sold by O2 in the UK over the next two years. Telefonica will actually work with device manufacturers to pre-install the application.