eBay's defining moves.
The defining strategic moves at eBay — each one explained and grounded in the record.
The Cannibalization Choice · Decision Forks
eBay Killed the Auction to Become Amazon. It Got Half of Amazon and None of eBay.
eBay slowly buried the auction that built it, until Buy It Now ran ~85-88% of listings. The lesson isn't bold self-disruption: GMV that topped $90B in 2019 (a figure that included StubHub, divested in 2020) sat near $79.6B in 2025 on a post-divestiture basis. It cannibalized its only difference and inherited a fight it couldn't win.
8 min
The Cannibalization Choice · Decision Forks
eBay Spun Off PayPal and Got the Smaller Half. By Design.
On its first trading day PayPal was worth $47.1 billion - eBay $34.7 billion. The parent had paid $1.5 billion for it in 2002, then let it walk out the door worth more than the company that raised it.
8 min
The Moat Anatomy · Moat Anatomy
eBay Isn't Stuck in the Middle. It's Walking Out of It - and Carrying One Big Risk.
Everyone says eBay is dying between Amazon's scale and Etsy's niche. The truth is stranger: it's deliberately shedding scale for margin, with ~70% of GMV now concentrated in a handful of passion categories - which is both the moat and the trap.
8 min