Here's an extraordinary video of eBay CEO John Donahoe bragging about how the company has sidelined what was once a core competency: Online auctions. Why solve a hard business problem when you can run away from it?
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like to talk about their hopes of "changing the world." Yes, of course: Changing the world from one in which they are poor to one in which they are fabulously wealthy. The question in the air is whether the founders of companies do a better job at creating wealth, for themselves and their…
You rarely see a photo of John Donahoe, eBay's Dennis-the-Menace lookalike CEO. But today's a good day to pull him out from under Meg Whitman's shadow. The auction deathstar's Q3 net income was $492.2 million, or 38 cents a share. Much better than last year, when chirpy little upstart Skype — a Whitman acquisition —…
Marc Andreessen has been invited to join the board at eBay. The online auction company has been struggling of late, never mind CEO John Donahoe's assertion that what's bad for the American economy is good for eBay. Andreessen, probably smelling the stink blowing in from the rising tide, stockpiled enough venture…
eBay has hired Deutsche Bank to help it sell procrastination tool StumbleUpon after buying it only a little more than a year ago in May 2007. The news follows an analyst's report earlier this week that the company needs to lay off 10 percent of its employees as well as an update from employee-written company reviews…
Auction giant eBay may have to cut ten percent of its 15,000-strong workforce if CEO John Donahoe wants to keep his job, research firm Wedge Partners reports. Considering that Donahoe will receive up up to five years pay if he gets canned, we wonder why he'll bother. The good news for the grunts is that cutting…
On eBay, some merchants are now more equal than others. eBay signed up Buy.com to sell on the site with a special deal: no listing fees, a perk which has allowed Buy.com to litter the site with junk listings like a single AA battery — an offering that makes no economic sense under the rules that apply to other eBay…
Click to viewBenchmark-backed Glassdoor.com popped out of stealth mode as a site that lets users find out what employees think of their employers. As a part of the ratings, company CEO's get a grade. Some, such as Cisco's John T. Chambers and Apple's Steve Jobs fared very well — coming away with 93 percent and 95…
In today's quarterly earnings call, when asked how eBay's business would fare in the oncoming recession, CEO John Donahoe remarked that the company is "a place where you can turn assets into cash in seven to fourteen days." Good times are here again! (Photo AP/Douglas C. Pizac)
Recently anointed eBay CEO John Donahoe thumped his chest over the auction giant's first-quarter earnings. He praised a "diverse portfolio of businesses" as revenues jumped 24 percent to $2.19 billion and earnings rose 22 percent to $459.7 million. The problem: Younger businesses like Skype and PayPal aren't as…
Under new CEO John Donahoe, eBay is moving to take its affiliate marketing in-house, a tipster tells us. The auction giant could dump ValueClick's Commission Junction, which currently pays website publishers to direct bidders to eBay's stores, for its own eBay Partner Network. The eBay website is already active,…
Sellers angry with new eBay CEO John Donahoe's policies have driven listings down 13 percent since February 18, according to measures taken by researchers. The boycotting sellers are angry about Donahoe's plans to charge them more after each item is sold and highlight listings for merchants with the highest…
eBay plans to reduce the price sellers have to pay to list items and charge them more after each item is sold, new CEO John Donahoe told the Wall Street Journal yesterday. The auction site also plans to discount fees and highlight listings for merchants with the highest customer-service ratings. eBay sellers are angry…
New eBay CEO John Donahoe made his first move today: eBay will reduce the price sellers have to pay to list items for sale on the site and charge them more after each item is sold. Additionally, the auction site will discount fees and highlight listings for merchants with the highest customer-service ratings. [WSJ]
Asked whether eBay would sell PayPal or Skype, new eBay CEO John Donahoe denied any chance of a PayPal sale but said the company planned to "test the synergies" resulting from the Skype integration. The questioner, Fortune's Adam Lashinsky, later told SAI that Donahoe's answer meant he would give Skype a year "to…
eBay's new CEO, John Donahoe, got a hefty payoff just for taking the job. Docu-Drama reports that his total take comes to $25 million, including a $15 million "promotion bonus" in the form of options and restricted stock. Then there's outgoing CEO Meg Whitman, who made a half-billion dollars in stock sales over her…
Whitman's out and the new guy in charge, John Donahoe, says step one to fixing eBay is fixing its internal search engine. "Our buyers tell us that we know you have unmatched selection, but we can't always find what we want," Donahoe told Bits. Unable to find what they want to buy using eBay's search, Donahoe's theory…
eBay CEO Meg Whitman could announce plans to retire as soon as today's earnings call. The most likely candidate to replace her? Consensus suggests auctions chief John Donahoe. But how'd that happen? A quick look at other viable contenders shows Donahoe's candidacy owes much to the process of elimination. Here's how…
At last, eBay CEO Meg Whitman is preparing to leave, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's about time, and even Whitman would agree, having said that no one should stay CEO of a company for more than 10 years. That deadline comes in March, and Tuesday's earnings call are as good a time to tell shareholders as any. Her…
For the first holiday season ever, more Americans visited Amazon.com than eBay last December, the New York Times reports, citing numbers from Nielsen. eBay still trumped Amazon in time spent, or "engagement," and total pageviews — all of that auction-watching, you know. And it's important to remember that traffic…
