Corporate affairs

Board of directors

As of October 2019 the board of directors was as follows:

• Thomas J. Tierney, co-founder of the Bridgespan Group, Chairman of eBay since March 2003
• Fred D. Anderson, former managing director of Elevation Partners, director of eBay since July 2003
• Anthony Bates, CEO of Genesys
• Adriane M. Brown, advisor at Intellectual Ventures, LLC
• Diana Farrell, CEO of JPMorgan Chase Institute
• Logan Green, CEO of Lyft
• Bonnie Hammer, Chairman, NBC Universal
• Kathleen Mitic, CEO of Sitch, Inc.
• Matt Murphy, CEO of Marvell Technology Group
• Paul Pressler, Partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, LLC
• Bob Swan, CEO of Intel Corporation
• Perry Traquina, CEO of Wellington Management Company

Former board members

• Pierre Omidyar, director since 1996 and chairman of eBay from May 1996 to May 2015. In 2020, it was announced that he will be leaving the board, however, will still hold the director emeritus title. Additionally, he could still potentially attend board meetings if invited, but won't have the right to vote.
• Jesse Cohn, Head of U.S. Equity Activism at Elliott Management Corporation. He joined the board in 2019 and left the next year.

Logo

In September 2012, eBay introduced a new logo set in the Univers typeface, but using a thinner variation of it, installed on the website on October 10, 2012. It replaced the logo with a thicker variation of Univers which had been used since its establishment in 1995. An all red, eBay logo with the same type set was also introduced to be used temporarily for various holidays.

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  1995–2012

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  2012–present

Profit and transactions

eBay generates revenue by a complex system of fees for services, listing product features, and a final value fee for sales proceeds by sellers. As of 2019 the US-based eBay.com charges $0.35 as an insertion fee for a basic listing without any adornments. The final value fee is 10-12% of the total amount of the sale, which is the price of the item plus shipping charges. Reduced final value fees are available to business registered customers. Other eBay websites follow a similar fee structure, but with different cost charges.

Under US law before 2018, a state cannot require sellers located outside the state to collect a sales tax, which made making purchases on eBay more attractive to American buyers. Sellers that operate as a business do follow state tax regulations on eBay transactions. Since 2018, changes to tax law in the United States force eBay (and other large marketplaces) to collect sales tax on any eBay purchase shipped to certain states.

The company's business strategy includes increasing international trade. eBay has already expanded to over two dozen countries, including China and India. Strategic international expansion has failed in Taiwan and Japan, where Yahoo! had a head start, and New Zealand, where Trade Me is the dominant online auction website. eBay also notably failed in China due to competition from local rival Taobao. eBay entered the Chinese market in 2002 and shut down its Chinese site in 2007. In India, eBay's operations came to a halt after it sold off its India operations to country's largest ecommerce company Flipkart, in the latter's $1.4Bn fundraise, where eBay was a participant.

In its Q1 2008 results, total payment volume via PayPal increased 17%, but of the eBay auction site it was up 61%.

For most listing categories, eBay sellers are permitted to offer a variety of payment systems such as Escrow.com, PayPal, Paymate, Propay, and Skrill. Propay and Skrill were banned effective September 27, 2015, citing low usage.

Escrow.com is eBay's approved escrow site. The transactions processed through Escrow.com largely are in relation to eBay Motors; however, they are not restricted to this type of listing.

eBay runs an affiliate program under the name eBay Partner Network. eBay affiliate marketers were originally paid a percentage of the eBay seller's transaction fees, with commissions ranging from 50% to 75% of the fees paid for an item purchased. In October 2009, eBay changed to an affiliate payout system that it calls Quality Click Pricing, in which affiliates are paid an amount determined by an undisclosed algorithm. The total earnings amount is then divided by the number of clicks the affiliate sent to eBay and is reported as Earnings Per Click, or EPC. In October 2013, ePN launched a new pricing model. The new model is more transparent and is based on category-level base commission rates with bonuses available for referring new and reactivated buyers.

On April 18, 2012, eBay reported a 29% Q1 revenue increase to $3.3 billion compared to their Q1 in 2011. Net income was reported to be at $570 million for the quarter.

For the fiscal year 2017, eBay reported losses of US$1.016 billion, with annual revenue of US$9.567 billion, an increase of 6.6% over the previous fiscal cycle. eBay's shares traded at over $35 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at over US$27.2 billion in October 2018.

Year	Revenue in mil. USD$	Net income in mil. USD$	Total Assets in mil. USD$	Price per Share in USD$	Employees
2005	4,552	1,082	11,789	15.65
2006	5,970	1,126	13,494	13.00
2007	7,672	348	15,366	13.25
2008	8,541	1,779	15,592	9.58
2009	8,727	2,389	18,408	7.29
2010	9,156	1,801	22,004	9.68
2011	11,652	3,229	27,320	12.28
2012	14,072	2,609	37,074	16.61
2013	16,047	2,856	41,488	21.03	33,500
2014	8,790	46	45,132	21.01	34,600
2015	8,592	1,725	17,755	25.00	11,600
2016	8,979	7,266	23,847	27.08	12,600
2017	9,567	−1,016	25,981	35.06	14,100
2018	10,746	2,530	22,819	34.31	14,000
2019	10,800	1,792	18,174	35.50	13,300

Environmental record

On May 8, 2008, eBay announced the opening of its newest building on the company's North Campus in San Jose, which is the first structure in the city to be built from the ground up to LEED Gold standards. The building, the first the company had built in its 13-year existence, uses an array of 3,248 solar panels, spanning 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2), and providing 650 kilowatts of power to eBay's campus. The array can supply 15–18% of the company's total energy requirements, reducing the amount of greenhouse gases that would be produced to create that energy by other means. SolarCity, the company responsible for designing the array, estimates that the solar panels installed on eBay's campus will prevent 37 million pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the environment as a result of replaced power production over the next three decades. Creating an equivalent impact to remove the same amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would require planting 322 acres (1.30 km2) of trees.

The design of the building also incorporates other elements to reduce its impact on the environment. The building is equipped with a lighting system that detects natural ambient light sources and automatically dims artificial lighting to save 39% of the power usually required to light an office building. eBay's newest building also reduces demand on local water supplies by incorporating an eco-friendly irrigation system, and low-flow showerheads and faucets. Even during construction, more than 75% of the waste from construction was recycled. eBay also runs buses between San Francisco and the San Jose campus to reduce the number of commuting vehicles. In 2014, eBay and several other Oregon businesses signed the Oregon Business Climate Declaration to promote local job growth and slow carbon pollution.

Acquisitions

PayPal

On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay. Its corporate headquarters were sited in San Jose, California, United States at eBay's North First Street satellite office campus. On September 30, 2014, eBay Inc. announced the divestiture of PayPal as an independent company, which was completed on July 20, 2015.

Craigslist

In the summer of 2004, eBay acknowledged that it had acquired 25% of classified listings website Craigslist. Former Craigslist executive Phillip Knowlton was the seller, and he insisted that his former employer was aware of his plans to divest his holdings. Initially, eBay assured Craigslist that eBay would not ask Craigslist to change the way it did business.

In March 2005, eBay launched the classifieds service Kijiji. In April 2008, eBay sued Craigslist to "safeguard its four-year financial investment", claiming that in January 2008, Craigslist took actions that "unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest by more than 10%". Craigslist countersued in May 2008 "to remedy the substantial and ongoing harm to fair competition" that Craigslist claimed was constituted by eBay's actions as a Craigslist shareholder. In September 2010, Delaware Judge William Chandler ruled that the actions of Craigslist were unlawful and that the actions were taken by Craigslist founders Jim Buckmaster and Craig Newmark had "breached their fiduciary duty of loyalty", and restored eBay's stake in the company to 28.4% from a diluted level of 24.85%. However, the judge dismissed eBay's objection to a staggered board provision, citing that Craigslist has the right to protect its own trade secrets. eBay spokesman Michael Jacobson stated "We are very pleased that the court gave eBay what it sought from the lawsuit."

Skype

In October 2005, eBay Inc. acquired Skype Technologies, developer of the Skype VoIP and Instant messaging service, significantly expanding its customer base to more than 480 million registered users worldwide. eBay later sold a majority stake in Skype in November 2009, while retaining a minority investment. This eventually led to the sale of the entire Skype business to Microsoft for $8.5 billion in May 2011.

StubHub

StubHub's acquisition by eBay was announced in January 2007 for a reported $310 million. According to CNN Money, 2007 was a very successful year for the company, handling five million individual transactions, more than in the previous six years combined of its history. Staffing at StubHub had increased to 350 workers by the time of the sale. Eight months after the acquisition, StubHub reached an exclusive agreement with Major League Baseball (MLB). They get a piece of the 25% in commissions StubHub earns on either end of a sale. Ticketmaster filed a lawsuit against StubHub and eBay in 2007, alleging "intentional interference" with Ticketmaster's contractual rights.

Corrigon

In October 2016, eBay acquired Corrigon, a visual search engine, for less than $30 million.

Qoo10.jp

In April 2018, eBay acquired the Japanese division of Qoo10, a market place driven by Giosis and having the 4th GMV in Japan, for a reported $573 million. With the close of the transaction, eBay also has relinquished its investment in Giosis’ non-Japanese businesses. This acquisition expands eBay's footprint in Japan, one of the largest e-commerce markets in the world. eBay made an initial investment in Giosis Pte. Ltd. in 2010. Since then, Giosis has established dynamic marketplace businesses across Asia. eBay's Japan business, including Giosis’ Japan business, will report into Jooman Park, senior vice president of eBay's Asia Pacific region.