Ebay buys PayPal

mdahlman was among several readers who submitted the story that eBay has bought Paypal in a deal worth $1.5B in stock. The article is mostly numbers and money related stuff, but it also briefly mentions some of the controversy surrounding eBay.

Maybe.....

[Lord_Slepnir]

Maybe they're just tring to set a record for the largest sale on their own auction site. You too could own paypal. Bids start at 1 billion, 2 billion dollar reserve.

The real question is...

[after5]

Did they pay using Paypal?

Do I hear 1.5 billion? Going once, twice...

[Ilan Volow]

Ebay took the "Buy now" option. I'd have always figured they would have opted for a fierce bidding war with [e-mail]. Assuming Paypal is guaranteed against DOA, the sellers of Paypal should get positive feedback.

Better call the FBI

[fritter]

It turns out they just fell for some Finnish guy's scam (never send $1.5B of stock to a P.O. box!). He claimed he was selling PayPal "for a friend", but oddly became angry upon suggestion of sending it C.O.D. Unfortunately, due to their toothless fraud protection policies, it looks like they're just gonna have to suck it up and take the loss.

Better luck next time, eBay! They probably should have bought PayPal through an escrow service...

Re:Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

"EBay Passport"? What about PayPalladium?

from the article

[tps12]

Asked about the deal, an Ebay spokesperson described PayPal's management as "A++++++++++", calling them "VERY RESPONSIVE" and noting that they "WOULD DEFINITLY BUY FROM AGAIN." PayPal's feedback rating is 1283.

Is it just me...

[mraymer]

...or does corporate America somewhat resemble a game of Pac-Man?

PayPal for sale

[totallygeek]

I didn't even get to catch that auction.

Hope they read the add...

[(H)elix1]

1.5B in paypall stock -- Original box, reciept. (Sold by they same folks selling empty PS2 boxes last year)

Re:Smart Move for Ebay, bad for paypal people.

[mshiltonj]

"I get my pay from germany with paypal, if they change it to you can only use your paypal money to pay for ebay stuff, ebay will gain, but we will all be stuffed."

If they did pull something like this, it would obviously annoy a lot of people. In that case, I would expect another 'replacement service' from another company to spring up with a different name but similar functionality, and perhaps fewer problems*.

This has already happened. Richard Stallman, shortly after the story broke, announced the creation of GnuPal [gnu.org], citing the need for an free (free to use, anyway) payment system. It will be deployed using the DotGNU [gnu.org] web services platform.

It was amost mine

[presearch]

Damn! I bid $1.45 billion and ebay sniped me in the last 20 seconds.