Synopsis
Gamestop has proposed a massive fifty-six billion dollar deal to acquire EBay. The videogame retailer, known for its meme-stock fame, is prepared to bypass EBay's board and take the offer directly to shareholders. This move signals a potential hostile takeover bid. EBay, a digital marketplace founded in nineteen ninety-five, has a market capitalization significantly larger than Gamestop.Listen to this article in summarized format
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Founded as an online auction platform in 1995, eBay made its Nasdaq debut three years later and has since grown into a digital marketplace valued at more than $46 billion. Here is a look at its major milestones:
1995: Founder Pierre Omidyar launches AuctionWeb to bring buyers and sellers together in an online marketplace
1997: AuctionWeb renamed eBay after the marketplace sold its millionth item
July 1998: Buys smaller auction site Jump Inc., its first acquisition
September 1998: Goes public, lists on the Nasdaq with shares 1998 officially offered at $18 apiece
December 1998: eBay Foundation is established, becoming the 1998 first corporate foundation endowed with pre-IPO stock
1999: Suffers its first major outage, restores service in under 20 hours
April 1999: eBay Motors launches as an online automotive 2000 marketplace
2000: Acquires books, music, movies and games marketplace Half.com for $241 million in stock deal
2002: Buys PayPal for about $1.5 billion to streamline payments
2004: Agrees to acquire housing rental listing service Rent.com for $415 million
May 2005: Launches Kijiji, a local classified advertising site; a few months later, it acquires Gumtree, also a classified listing site
October 2005: Buys internet phone-calling firm Skype for up to $4 billion
February 2005: Sells its most expensive item, a 2006 Frank Mulder-designed gigayacht for over $160 million, according to reports
2007: Acquires ticketer StubHub for around $310 million
2008: Meg Whitman steps down as eBay CEO after a decade at the helm, replaced by John Donahoe
2009: Sells Skype to a group of investors but retains a minority stake
December 2010: Acquires Milo.com to support local product search
2011: Takes a stake in Turkish online marketplace GittiGidiyor and acquires cellphone payments provider Zong
2012: Sells Rent.com to PRIMEDIA
2013: Acquires Braintree for about $800 million to strengthen PayPal's presence
2014: Announces spin-off of PayPal following pressure from activist investor Carl Icahn
2015: EBay Enterprise is sold for $925 million
May 2016: Acquires Expertmaker, an AI and machine-learning company
October 2016: Launches ShopBot and acquires Corrigon to support visual searches
February 2018: Acquires Giosis' Japan business
2019: Announces its first dividend and agrees to sell StubHub for $4.05 billion to Viagogo
2020: Sells its classifieds business to Adevinta in a deal valued at $13 billion
2021: Sells its South Korean business to Emart for $3 billion
2022: Acquires NFT marketplace KnownOrigin and collectible cards marketplace TCGplayer
2023: Acquires Certilogo
2025: Partners with OpenAI on Operator, a research preview of next-generation AI agents
2026: GameStop makes a $56 billion for the company.
