eBay on Sunday confirmed that a "technical issue" had caused search queries on the auction site to be messed up over the weekend, resulting in limited or no search results. The company says that it's being cautious, though, and is holding back on some advanced search features until the issue is fully solved.
"We are happy to report that critical search functionality was restored overnight on Saturday and we are seeing normal activity levels today," a post on the company's eBay Ink blog read Sunday. "As part of our effort to restore critical search functionality as quickly as possible for sellers and for buyers, we have kept some secondary search features temporarily offline. This includes refining search by certain item specifics, such as color or clothing size, and having Store Inventory Format results included in the main search results."
In a statement, eBay also said the technical issue was caused by "a surge in live listings as sellers ramp up for the holiday season. eBay currently has more than 200 million live listings, 33 percent more than at this time a year ago."
Some eBay members still weren't satisfied with the explanation. "I had a one day auction ending today, (and) no one was obviously able to bid on it because they couldn't search for it," one commenter said on the eBay Ink blog. "Will I get a credit for this?"
"eBay should credit all sellers with active listings during this time," another said. "These issues have cost sellers many bids and sales. Once again eBay is screwing sellers."
Much like Twitter's today, outages at eBay were rather prominent in the company's early days. They're not too frequent anymore. But this one came at a time when there are some sentiments of malaise among eBay sellers, some of whom use the auction site to make a living, and when it also faces increased competition in the e-commerce sector.
An analyst release from JP Morgan Chase said that it did not anticipate the outage would have an effect on eBay's fourth-quarter earnings. But, it contained a warning: "Although we recognize it is virtually impossible for a site of this complexity to not encounter occasional issues," the report from analyst Imran Khan read, "we continue to believe that eBay needs to make greater investments in the robustness and functionality of its site in order to remain competitive within the e-commerce space."
Sold!
Auction site eBay has, as long anticipated, sold off the Skype telephony service to a group of investors that includes Marc Andreessen's new Andreessen Horowitz group, Silver Lake, and the Skype co-founders' Joltid Ltd. The investor group now holds about 70 percent of the company; eBay retains the rest in a minority stake. Joltid was brought into the investor group as part of the settlement of a copyright suit that the Skype co-founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, filed against eBay over Skype's technology. At one point, that dispute was looking so ugly that eBay was reportedly considering rebuilding Skype's technology altogether.
The sale amounted to approximately $1.9 billion in cash and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million, for a total of $2.025 billion.
eBay's plans to get rid of Skype, a purchase that had never fit quite well into its auction business, had been well-publicized. Last spring, the company formally announced that it planned to spin off Skype as a publicly traded company in the first half of 2010.
The final $2.75 billion valuation is only slightly higher than the $2.6 billion that eBay originally acquired Skype for in 2005.
eBay wants to spin off telephony service Skype into a separate publicly traded company, but something's standing in the way: Skype's founders are threatening to take back some of the technology amid a licensing dispute.
The auction giant's solution, according to a Bloomberg report on Thursday: build a new one.
This was revealed in a 10-Q regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; eBay is not commenting beyond the filing. You can decide whether "Frankenskype" or "Skypenstein" is a better name for the hypothetical creation.
Here's what has happened: Skype's founders have established a company called Joltid Ltd., which still owns the rights to some of Skype's technology. Joltid has made the accusation that eBay doesn't have the right to do everything it wants with all of Skype's code as a result; eBay is suing Joltid to get that technology back. (Is this like the Silicon Valley equivalent of body-snatching?) But the catch is that the trial isn't scheduled until next June, which could put a big roadblock in the way of eBay's plans for a Skype IPO.
So that's why eBay is working on a total rebuild of Skype's software.
There is, however, this little issue. "The new software will be expensive and might not work," Bloomberg's article summarized. "The company said it might have to shut down Skype if the dispute with the founders isn't resolved."
eBay purchased Skype in 2005 for $2.6 billion, but it hasn't proven to be the best fit for the company. Rumors circulated that it was looking to sell Skype, possibly to Google, but then opted to take the company public instead.
Download Skype for Windows | Mac | iPhone | Windows Mobile from CNET Download.com.
You'd think the parent company of $1,500 Louis Vuitton handbags would be able to tolerate a few fakes on eBay. Not so.
And a French court agreed on Monday, ordering the online auction giant to pay $61 million (38.6 million euros) to luxury goods powerhouse LVMH, according to Reuters. LVMH, along with other luxury-brand groups like Tiffany & Co. and Hermes, has claimed that eBay isn't strict enough about policing the sale of counterfeit goods on its site.
eBay promptly appealed the court decision, saying that LVMH was simply trying to crack down on competition; eBay makes money off any LVMH goods sold on its site, real or fake, whereas LVMH itself does not.
LVMH has an impressive portfolio containing a whole lot of brands that Kanye West has probably name-dropped in multiple songs, like Louis Vuitton, Acqua di Parma, Thomas Pink, Dior, Givenchy, Moet & Chandon, De Beers, and Marc Jacobs.
Monday's ruling encompassed a number of individual cases brought by LVMH brands like Dior Couture, Guerlain, Givenchy, and Kenzo. The 38.6 million euros awarded fell short of the 50 million euros that the luxury goods house had claimed in damages.
Bye-bye, Expo. We, um, didn't use you.
(Credit: Windows Live Expo)This post was updated at 11:56 AM with comment from Microsoft.
Chalk one point up to Craigslist: Microsoft has decided to shut down Windows Live Expo, the classifieds service that it originally launched in February 2006.
Expo will disappear on July 31, a notice on the site explains. Until then, no new listings can be posted or extended, and no new accounts can be created. Microsoft representatives responded on Friday with a statement from the company: "We have learned a tremendous amount from our experience with Windows Live Expo and believe this decision, while a hard one, will serve to more effectively focus our resources towards other priority online service investments for our customers."
The most recent post on the Expo blog is from last September.
Online classifieds continue to be dominated by Craigslist, a scrappy start-up with a hippie attitude and a user interface worthy of 1997. The company is currently ensnared in a legal tiff with major investor eBay over the auction giant's in-house classifieds site, Kijiji.
In a tiff over its 28.4 percent share in Craigslist, auction giant eBay has filed suit against the online classifieds site in a Delaware court of chancery. According to Reuters, eBay has accused Craigslist's board of directors of diluting its share.
The court confirmed that eBay filed its complaint Tuesday afternoon but could not provide further details, because the suit was filed under seal.
In a phone conversation, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said, "We're still trying to digest it," and recommended contacting CEO Jim Buckmaster for further comment. Buckmaster did not immediately reply to an e-mail inquiry.
Newmark, Buckmaster, and the Craigslist company are reportedly named as defendants in the suit, the Reuters article asserts.
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