What eBay's Investment in Magento Means

by: Ming the Merciless

Ebay can be counted on to do absolutely nothing to help North American sellers, and I do as little business with the Ebay Syndicate as possible.

They can NOT be trusted. They do NOT and do NOT tell the truth. They ARE unreliable. All of them.

The viciousness with which ebay has attacked North American sellers selling North American products should be a warning to anyone wanting to do business with any ebay company.

Have a Pro Stores store? In addition to the shoddy service and constant glitches, I think ebay is about throw you guys under the Magento bus.

by: jake

Cant wait to see how eBay mess this one up...dont tell me they are going after the apps market for mobiles LOL?

From what i see eBay is looking like a for sale sign will be going up soon ...It's all about Paypal now and that should be fun when they get the spotlight shon upon them for poor finace controls and very shady dealings with peoples money

by: Philip Cohen

Maybe eBay intends to try to buy all of Magento and then close it down. After all, why would they otherwise want to buy into a technology that can only ultimately hurt their Marketplace business?

eBay/PayPal/Donahoe: Dead Men Walking.

by: Repeat Monkey

Hmmmm where have I seen this before? Sounds a little like Craigslist. Give eBay an inch and they take a mile.

by: PongGuru

The eBay ProStore is a very buggy application. I tried their 10.2 version lately. Ultimately I helped them to fix bugs than building my store. Alas! Such a crappy application has more users.

by: Enough Already

Magento will be for the small to medium sized sellers.  They want to preserve the "eBay Brand" for the Big Box stores that they claim they have "no problem talking to."  Separate the marketplace - small, individual and mid sized sellers will flock to Magento, leave the chinese junk on eBay.  Great plan. Can they pull it off???

by: Frightened Fran

Approach ''Magent-Go'' with great caution.

I suspect that in time (if not immediately) those merchantes who use the eBay/Mageto software-as-a-service platform will discover that they have lost control over their own store policies (ie: returns and shipping) and that they have lost ownership rights of any images they use to illustrate the products being sold.

It will be eBay-plus...only the plus doesn't mean ''better''...it's WORSE.

by: summer in the city

I wouldn't get your hopes up. Everything Donahoe touches turns to doo-doo.
Always has, always will.

What's not to understand?

by: old timer

As much as I would like to see another option for sellers looking to expand/leave eBay, I don't think many sellers upset with eBay's treatment will jump on the Magneto band wagon. Disgruntled sellers (usually upset for good reason) have long memories, just like a disgruntled buyer. Neither makes for a good customer base for any company.

In my case, eBay's involvement/ownership means that Magneto will not be on my list of options. Trust is built on experience and my experience with JD's world view is pretty bad.

Ina, how about some more in depth articles on other options/service providers for sellers looking to establish their own web sites? Those would be of interest to a lot of your readers.

by: John

Different rules for different sellers, The BIGS will get eBay and all the perks for being a BIG. The little's will get magneto, and all the added fees for being a little.

Complaining will do little good, soon the Troth feeders will chime in to pump the sale.

by: Doris Knight

I think the dollar signs in the eyes of Magento execs prevented them from seeing (or remembering) eBay's actions with regard to Craigslist.

History will repeat itself. eBay is not to be trusted.

As an aside, Magento was just ONE of several shopping cart options that I considered when exploring ways to start expanding my business beyond ebay.

As it turns out, I chose another shopping cart package, but THANK THE DEITY that I did not choose Magento!! It's been such a struggle to BREAK AWAY from eBay's ABUSE and it would be SO MADDENING to have made such meaningful strides only to discover that eBay/PayPal had wormed their way back into my business.

They're a CANCER!

by: Poppa

I think it's clear that eBay have the resources to do anything they need to  strengthen their position. While this may not sit very well with the open-source community, or people who dislike eBay, this was a very smart move. Why have a competitor down the road, when you can invest in them or own them outright. They've done it with craigslist, ChannelAdvisor and of course, most famously, PayPal.

by: goju

i dont get a good feeling about this ebay investment in magento. i have a small business, and i want to remain independent, big companies like ebay and amazon will eat up small businesses.

by: chaz

I'd love a technology that let me enter data and upload photos in a simple way as with Auctiva that could then take them and put them in a templated website for me even if not perfect.  ProStores is supposed to do this, but doesn't.  I started it once and would never go back, especially with its technical problems.  Auctiva's commerce solution isn't much better.  Right now it's almost easier to just put up one's own simplified web site that isn't necessarily a full ecommerce site than go with a company supposedly offereing ecommerce solutions, which require a seemingly endless number of preliminary steps before you put even one thing up for sale.  And almost as soon as one company looks like they have a solution, such as BigCommerce, users end up reporting problems.  I find it amazing that ebay has never seen the gigantic money they could make by making worldwide ecommerce web sites easy for sellers, especially if they did not insist on charging a percentage of sales.  Their limited vision is what hurts their and their sellers' progress (among many other things).  

by: Patricia

Sellers will get over their distrust of Ebay when H#LL freezes over!

by: Digby

Yes Ina, I think it would be great if you gave a bit more focus on web commerce webstores and companies such as Magento etc.

And stand alone websites.

by: Joe Average

Well, maybe eBay cannot screw this one up (like ProStores and eBay Stores). There is a reason why they have a 49% stake in Magento and not 51%. On paper at least, eBay does not have control. Right?

by: Ming the Merciless

@Joe Average

See the Craig's List case. Ebay only owns 24% of their stock, and 24% was enough to create legal havoc with Criag's List founders thanks to Negged Meg Whitman's bad faith negotiations.

Ebafia is only 2% short of controol over Magento and could initiate a hostile takeover at some point.

There are other choices than Magento. Why give ebafia any more money followed in the future with (more) power over your business?

by: buck efay

I pay Yahoo like $15 a month for my website, they give me free tools to build it & run it, and if the customer NEEDS a shopping cart, I send them to my FREE clone listings on Ecrater! Why PAY these people? The last time they took over a software company I used was Blackthorne. Their founder defended the deal to me on a webchat & said there were no plans to reduce functionality of the existing program we had BOUGHT. Within weeks of him telling me that, Ebay screwed things around & changed categories, so the program wouldn't work right anymore. Unless I subscribed for a monthly fee! This is a very untrustworthy company.

by: Ming the Merciless

If I recall correctly, at least one of those hot shot Wall Street analysts asked The Ho what plans he had for all the millions and millions in cash ebafia has stashed away in offshore banks safe from US taxes.

The answer is a PacMan like spending spree that is llikely not produce many results except possible -- all together now -- in mobile apps.