Posted on 09/01/2009 4:44:25 AM PDT by Slapshot68
(Reuters) -
Internet auction and services company EBay Inc has reached a deal to sell its online telephony unit Skype to a group of private investors, the New York Times said, citing two people briefed on its plans.
Andreessen Horowitz, a new venture capital firm headed by the Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, is likely to be among the investors in the group, the paper cited the people as saying.
London-based Index Ventures and Silver Lake Partners may also be involved in the deal, one of the people told the paper.
(Excerpt) Read more at tech.yahoo.com ...
Now they need to sell PayPal and their interest in Craig’s List.
PayPal is where most of their profits come from, why would selling it be a good idea?
It would be a good idea for eBay’s users, not the company.
eBay has structured itself so that it is almost impossible to pay for anything using any method other than PayPal. Cash? No good. Money order? No good. Personal check? No good. Wire transfer? No good.
If you sell on eBay you MUST offer PayPal.
Personally, I have never had a problem with PayPal, but many people have. G**gle “paypal problems” and see.
eBay’s PayPal-only policy is driving both sellers and buyers away from the company.
As a seller, you MUST have your PayPal account linked into your bank account, just like the government wants to link into your bank account as part of “health care reform”. I don’t trust eBay/PayPal any more than I trust the government.
Sellers are not bound to use PayPal. Their own merchant account has always been an option and most of the larger sellers i.e. actual businesses have always used them instead of PayPal.
I accept PP because it’s cheaper than my merchant account would be if I set it up to accept online payments. If PP ever offers the ability to be used in my brick and mortor, I’m all in. It wasn’t ebay that structured itself around PP. PP structured itself around the buyers and kicked ebay’s own payment processor to the curb. So ebay bought them out. It was one of the only smart aquisitions they made.
Ebay would be stupid to sell a cash cow like PP.
As you admit, a merchant account doesn’t make sense for a small volume eBay seller.
So, once the small guy has been screwed by PayPal, he doesn’t have a viable alternative. Either he accepts PayPal, or he leaves eBay.
I never said PayPal wasn’t a smart acquisition for eBay, and there’s no question that it’s a cash cow. And you can’t argue against its convenience, at least in the vast majority of cases when it works right.
Their restrictive payment policies are just one of the changes that eBay has made over the last few years which have worsened the eBay experience for the small seller and the buyer.
Obviously they will never sell PayPal, as much as I would like to see that happen.
No, the small seller can get a merchant account and pay the slightly higher percentages on processing. A merchant account makes perfect sense if you are unable to get a PP account
It always astonishes me, how many think ebay/PayPal owe them a cost free business model or that doing business online should magically be risk free for the seller.
I've read lots of the PP horror stories and I have yet to see one where the alleged victim didn't seem to be clueless about business risks and responsibilities.
People with that entitlement attitude don't last very long in business for themselves.
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