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EBay to Spin Off PayPal

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Re: EBay to Spin Off PayPal

#101
post #80

I think one of the major sources of eBay's troubles is their decision to slowly abandon their P2P focus, in favor of the "shopping mall of the internet" model that Amazon uses. Rather than pursuing this model and doing it better than the competition, they chose to ape them, and badly. Like CrazyCatDog said, eBay is the textbook example of what happens when a tech company is run by consultants who don't understand the…

A contrarian view: there is some room to attack Amazon, primarily in the UX department. I wouldn't rule that out as a strategy for growth, but is eBay the right company to execute it? That's where it gets murky. They have a lot of the same usability flaws.

> A contrarian view: there is some room to attack Amazon, primarily in the UX department.

Good luck with that. I've spent over $50K at Amazon over the last decade according to the data I dumped out of my orders. I'm a prime member. Amazon's site isn't perfect, but between the reviews, 2-day free shipping, 1 day at ~$5 extra, and product selection rivaled only by Walmart, I wouldn't look at Ebay unless it was something exotic (5 ton military truck for example).

"Bid" on something? No. Use Ebay's UX compared to Amazon's? Again, no thank you. Wait 5-7 days (at least) for something? Good luck Ebay!

Re: EBay to Spin Off PayPal

#102
post #48
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an engineer at Braintree. Speaking only for myself, I don't see a conflict of interest between us and PayPal. PayPal has embraced our APIs and approach to support as the future of how merchants will integrate with PayPal, and we've been able to leverage PayPal's consumer brand to build better products for our merchants. I was initially very, very skeptical of our acquisition, but I have to admit it's turned out w…

For what it's worth, PayPal is embracing the shit out of BT acquisition - really see that as the north star for our merchant integration story. Everyone knows they know what they are doing and only want to help, they don't want to hinder/hobble/mess with it.

So what you're saying is that they learned their lessons from the VeriSign Payment Services acquisition, and learned not to actively try to break things that work?

(Yes, still very, very bitter about that. If you have a different perspective on that time/process, I would genuinely like to hear it.)

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