eBay: From a Broken Laser Pointer to GameStop's $56 Billion Takeover Bid

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In 1995, programmer Pierre Omidyar listed a broken laser pointer on his hobby site, AuctionWeb, for less than $15. It sold to a collector of broken laser pointers, and the sale proved a theory: with a big enough network, there is a buyer for anything. This episode follows the 30 years that came after, from a site whose first employee, Chris Agarpao, was hired to open envelopes of mailed checks, to a company that went public in 1998 with shares opening at $18 and closing the first day at $53.

The story is as much about failure as growth. eBay bought PayPal, Skype, and StubHub, then lost China to Alibaba's Taobao after starting with an 85 percent market share. It fought Craigslist in court for years and was disgraced by a 2020 cyberstalking campaign against the publishers of a critical newsletter. Its answer was to rebuild around authentication. That infrastructure is what GameStop appears to want in its May 2026 hostile bid, which eBay rejected as neither credible nor attractive.

• When traffic pushed Omidyar's internet bill from $30 to $250 a month, his grandfather, General Mahmoud Mir Jalali, helped keep the servers running.
• By 1997, Beanie Babies accounted for 10 percent of all eBay listings, as collectors used the site to find a real market price for hard-to-value items.
• In China, eBay's share fell from 85 percent to 7.7 percent by 2007. It kept auctions, charged fees, and ran slow US-based servers while Taobao was free and offered instant messaging.
• eBay employees sent a preserved fetal pig, live spiders, a bloody Halloween mask, and a funeral wreath to the publishers of EcommerceBytes. Several went to prison, and CEO Devin Wenig, who was not charged, left with $57 million.
• GameStop quietly built a 5 percent stake through shares and derivatives before going directly to shareholders with a $56 billion cash and stock offer.