GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay • Hacker News Board

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#661

Post by Scoundreller » Tue, May 05, 2026, 4:27 AM UTC

avemg wrote: post #548

thefounder wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But eBay is just bad company with a bad reputation. Why would they buy it instead something like Etsy or make their own thing? If you would ask me what are the worst companies from the “old guard” I would name eBay and PayPal as prime suspects.

Because Etsy is not a general second-hand marketplace. Its niche is artisans making small batch items. And making your own thing at the scale of ebay is not exactly a small feat.

I’ve def bought some CD keys off Etsy. They’ll list anything.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#662

Post by Scoundreller » Tue, May 05, 2026, 4:31 AM UTC

turtlesdown11 wrote: post #373

Hilliard_Ohiooo wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just bought a used switch there yesterday, 2 guys are selling or trading some kind of game card, kid and his dad getting a PS4... Like you say, no one goes to game stop anymore, it's too crowded ;)

>Like you say, no one goes to game stop anymore, it's too crowded Must be why it's revenue is declining to it's historic 2006 level, because it's just too busy. net sales 2016 $8.6b, 2025 $3.5b and still in decline

eBay isn’t doing much better. Revenue Peaked in 2014. Basically treading water. Last real growth was late 2000s.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#663

Post by Scoundreller » Tue, May 05, 2026, 4:34 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #319

dingaling wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe eBay survives as an international site I don't really know what alternative there is to eBay as an 'everything shop'. I can get specific screws there, or diff fluid, or a customised motorhome name sticker, or an old baseball cap for an airshow I attended in 2008. And if I bought the wrong diff fluid I can sell it. The main value over Amazon, though, is that the search works.

> The main value over Amazon, though, is that the search works. Super true. You can actually search for the exact brand you want and not get a search result page full of brands XIAOLE, LLKAPOO, JEMROK, QPPNSS, VRINHH. Also, I don't really know why, but I have much greater confidence on eBay that I'm not going to get something counterfeit or unsafe.

EBay does do search well. Exact phrase matches, negation, ORs

A search for this works exactly as you expect:

(Lamborghini Urus, Audi RS Q8, and Volkswagen Touareg) “stereo wiring harness” -untested

It’s gotten a bit more fuzzy if you do something wrong. I used to have an alert for a mis-spelled brand name to snipe stuff :)

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#664

Post by Scoundreller » Tue, May 05, 2026, 4:41 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #365

shmatt wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBay is dying, new competitors are being created constantly, and the big ones like Poshmark are getting more North American buyers and sellers. eBay has barely grown since their post covid slump Maybe eBay survives as an international site but even at that point, with $20B in debt this will just follow the regular PE playbook of shutting down after many layoffs and pivots The entire concept of, "I have $1,000 in the…

I mean I don't love eBay, but it's certainly not dying, where did you get that idea? Its revenue has continued to grow every year post-COVID, and competitors all face the central challenge of eBay's network effect. It's not experience massive growth but that's because it's a pretty mature market by this point. People who want to sell their stuff already use eBay. It works. It's mature.

Revenue peaked in 2014. Pretty much flat for the past 15 years.

Markets are built on eBay and then leave.

Kinda weird for an online shopping site to… miss the absolutely massive growth in platforms that let 3rd parties sell their stuff online.

Others grew out of their niche, best eBay can do is acquire a handful of their new competitors to keep up.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#665

Post by jamesfinlayson » Tue, May 05, 2026, 4:48 AM UTC

repelsteeltje wrote: post #26

lesuorac wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, his argument is that he can remove inefficiencies in the combined company. GME is ~12B, EBAY is ~46B (58 total) with net income of 0.4B and 2B (2.4 total). If he boosts profit by 1.2B then it's nearly a 50% increase and probably going to result in a more valuable combined company despite the debt.

> Well, his argument is that he can remove inefficiencies in the combined company. Sigh. The synergy argument, once again. While historically most mergers don't work out particularly well, I'm absolutely sure this time will be different.

I've been told that Australian company Wesfarmers fanatically avoids synergies when acquiring companies so that if the time comes to cast it off, there's no painful separation of a bunch of shared systems/departments/real estate etc.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#666

Post by coffeebeqn » Tue, May 05, 2026, 5:12 AM UTC

avemg wrote: post #548

thefounder wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But eBay is just bad company with a bad reputation. Why would they buy it instead something like Etsy or make their own thing? If you would ask me what are the worst companies from the “old guard” I would name eBay and PayPal as prime suspects.

Because Etsy is not a general second-hand marketplace. Its niche is artisans making small batch items. And making your own thing at the scale of ebay is not exactly a small feat.

Sadly that was Etsy 10 years ago but today is a dropshipping front

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#667

Post by flyingcircus3 » Tue, May 05, 2026, 5:22 AM UTC

59percentmore wrote: post #519

jancsika wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The original shorting of GameStop back in 2021 gave them a bit of a boost back into the green. IIRC, the short (borrowing stock, selling high, waiting for a downtrend, then buying low to pay back the borrowed stock buy an agreed date) was accelerating the fall of GameStop's stock price. Then some Reddit knuckleheads noticed the hedge fund shorting GameStop was over-leveraged. They also found the deadline the hedge…

Eh. The capital was provided by various share offerings and, most recently, a bond sale, which retail probably and definitely did not buy, respectively. But here's the fun part. All of those issuances were made during periods of weirdly high prices. The biggest one was this time 2 years ago. The price jumped to $80. Doesn't seem like much, but there was a share split in 2022, 4:1. Between that and the offerings, buyi…

There is too much overlap with the tropes found in communities who want to believe in aliens and interdimensional beings to take the Gamestop saga seriously. So many appeals to emotion and ignorance, and the investment in a particular outcome has made the reddit groups around this topic indistinguishable from people who are ride or die Trumpers impervious to the falsification of their bad ideas. There is no longer a rubric of reasonable evaluation of new relevant information. The festering wound of people like Ken Griffin effortlessly getting away with their crimes has gone on for so long that has radicalized people to interpret every new piece of info through the lens of being the first crumplings of an eventual avalanche of retribution that has been promised to them.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#668

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Tue, May 05, 2026, 5:49 AM UTC

mixologic wrote: post #642

sanswork wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tightening your belt is a good thing. No disagreement there but it has a hard limit. You can't just keep tightening the belt and growing profit, at some point you have to start revenue expansion again and from what I've seen Gamestop has no way to do that. At $2.50 they had massive amounts of debt they couldn't service and a very real chance of going out of business. Then through pure luck they became a meme and were…

The meme investors can stay irrational long before gamestop gets a growth story. If they haven't given up on their get rich quick scheme that's lasted over five years now, I really don't think they're going to jump ship now. The sad part is that gamestop is offering 55 billion, yet only has 9 billion in cash. The only way they come up with that much capital to buy ebay is to dilute the existing shareholders to a poin…

I was assuming it was going to be an LBO? Surely they don't plan to raise the money in cash.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#669

Post by markdown » Tue, May 05, 2026, 6:02 AM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #620

BizarroLand wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, $700 is worth a lawsuit. eBay knows who the buyer is and would be required to turn over the transcripts of the conversations to the court, and if you're suing the buyer eBay's arbitration system wouldn't protect them. Then, after you win that, you can drag eBay into arbitration for the suffering. I bet you'd walk away with $5k or so after expenses if you have a decent lawyer.

The fee for filing a lawsuit by itself is $405. That's before any lawyer touches anything and you get to find out how high a lawyer's hourly rate is. A simple, easy lawsuit will cost you in the same range as a house. Even if you win, thanks to the American rule of "each side pays their own attorneys' fees." No, $700 is not worth a lawsuit.

Do you not have small claims court? They're usually free.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#670

Post by realharo » Tue, May 05, 2026, 6:12 AM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #375

shmatt wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBay is dying, new competitors are being created constantly, and the big ones like Poshmark are getting more North American buyers and sellers. eBay has barely grown since their post covid slump Maybe eBay survives as an international site but even at that point, with $20B in debt this will just follow the regular PE playbook of shutting down after many layoffs and pivots The entire concept of, "I have $1,000 in the…

> Can you imagine if the mortgage was owned by our home, not ourselves. And we could stop paying it without any personal consequences To a large degree you can just stop paying your mortgage. The biggest personal consequence is you will be evicted and lose both your place to live and any equity you built up. The other main consequence is it will show up on your credit report for 7 years. Maybe some specific forms ask…

This depends entirely on your local laws and the kinds of loans banks offer.

In most places, you can only get recourse mortgages. You will be liable for the rest of the mortgage, if the value of the house drops so much that selling it doesn't cover the remaining debt.

House values dropping a lot is something that happens fairly rarely, but it tends to happen exactly during the times when you are most likely to be unable to pay your mortgage (recessions, industry downturns, etc.)