Ebay's 30-year journey: From a bidding marketplace to takeover target

GameStop on Sunday proposed a $56 billion cash-and-stock deal for eBay, with CEO Ryan Cohen saying the videogame retailer was prepared to take the offer directly to shareholders if eBay's board resisted. GameStop - which shot to fame during a "meme-stock frenzy" five years ago - holds a 5% stake in eBay, whose market capitalization is roughly four times larger, according to LSEG data.

Founded as an online auction ‌platform in ⁠1995, eBay ⁠made its Nasdaq debut three years later and has since grown into a digital marketplace valued at ​more than $46 billion. Here is a look at its major milestones:

1995: Founder Pierre Omidyar launches AuctionWeb to bring ​buyers and sellers together in an online marketplace


1997: AuctionWeb renamed eBay after the marketplace sold its millionth item

July 1998: Buys smaller auction site Jump Inc., its first acquisition

September 1998: Goes public, lists on the Nasdaq with ​shares 1998 officially offered at $18 apiece

December 1998: eBay Foundation is established, becoming the 1998 first ⁠corporate foundation ‌endowed with pre-IPO stock

1999: Suffers its first major outage, restores service in under 20 ​hours

April 1999: eBay Motors ​launches as an online automotive 2000 marketplace

2000: Acquires books, music, movies and games marketplace Half.com ⁠for $241 million in stock deal

2002: Buys PayPal for about $1.5 billion to streamline payments

2004: Agrees ​to acquire housing rental listing service Rent.com for $415 million

May 2005: Launches Kijiji, ​a local classified advertising site; a few months later, it acquires Gumtree, also a classified listing site

October 2005: Buys internet phone-calling firm Skype for up to $4 billion

February 2005: Sells its most expensive item, a 2006 Frank Mulder-designed gigayacht for over $160 million, according to reports

2007: Acquires ticketer StubHub for around $310 million

2008: Meg Whitman steps down as eBay CEO after a decade at the helm, replaced by John Donahoe

2009: Sells Skype to a group of ‌investors but retains a minority stake

December 2010: Acquires Milo.com to support local product search

2011: Takes a stake in Turkish online marketplace GittiGidiyor and acquires cellphone payments provider Zong

2012: Sells Rent.com to ​PRIMEDIA

2013: Acquires Braintree for ​about $800 million to strengthen PayPal's ⁠presence

2014: Announces spin-off of PayPal following pressure from activist investor Carl Icahn

2015: EBay Enterprise is sold for $925 million

May 2016: Acquires Expertmaker, an AI and machine-learning company

October 2016: Launches ShopBot and acquires Corrigon to support visual searches

February 2018: Acquires Giosis' ​Japan business

2019: Announces its first dividend and agrees to sell StubHub for $4.05 billion to Viagogo

2020: Sells its classifieds business to Adevinta in a deal valued at $13 billion

2021: Sells its South Korean business to Emart for $3 billion

2022: Acquires NFT marketplace KnownOrigin and collectible cards marketplace TCGplayer

2023: Acquires Certilogo

2025: Partners with OpenAI on Operator, a research preview of next-generation AI agents

2026: GameStop makes a $56 billion for the company.