Ebay To Spin Off Paypal

Good thing. Conglomerates - and monopolies - forget they have something called "clients."

And even better news: John Donahoe will be stepping down as CEO of e-bay This at least opens the door to hope for some sort of return to normalcy for sellers - i.e. hopefully the new CEO will realize that there can be only one Amazon and will instead concentrate on what made e-bay so special to begin with.

It will be interesting to see what changes happen to ebay if any. It might be nice if ebay no longer makes PayPal it's mandatory payment option and allow traditional payment methods. Let the buyers and sellers agree on what payment methods they want. Doubt it will truly happen with how ebay is currently structured, but one can dream.

John Donahoe is going to stay on the Board of Directors of both companies, but will not be CEO of either of them..

The "mandatory" requirement for Paypal has been gone
for a long, long time... there are about 3 or 4 current
payment services which any seller can use within ebay
(including) Paypal or (excluding) Paypal...

disi123: Sorry, by traditional payment methods I meant checks, money orders or even cash.

There's a way (around) all payment services...
set yourself up to take credit and debit cards...

I personally have found PayPal a lot safer, easier & faster than regular
credit cards and other methods of payment that were in existence previously with ebay . One click and finished.

PayPal is quick and easy and there are other electronic payments, but I still think it would be nice to allow payments by mail if the buyer chooses to do so. Some people do not trust electronic payments due to hacking or privacy concerns, or they do not have the resources (some people in other countries are in this boat).

It's one of the top questions I receive on ebay - "Can I send a payment by mail?" Of course I can accept it, but I cannot advertise it. It would just be nice to have all the options on the table.

As Kevin mentioned Donahue will continue to have influence from the BOD positions. Most people agree that this spin off was not desired by Donahue and the current BOD but brought about by pressure from investors. (Notably by shareholder Carl Icahn who owns 30.8 million shares of ebay and now is in a position to cash in a huge profit.)

Love him or hate him, Donahue did an incredible job in turning around ebay's bottom line. Since joining ebay in 2005 Donahue helped ebay's stock more than double in price. This is EXACTLY what he was hired to do. If any of us owned a company or a large amount of shares in a company we would want a guy like him running it.

There are many other perspectives than just that of an ebay seller. I know that bashing on eBay/PayPal is in fashion but we should remember that they are a corporation first and foremost. Their priority is shareholders. Of course 'sellers' and 'buyers' are important by we should not lose sight of how huge corporations work.

The people who are stepping in as CEO of ebay and PayPal are not going to ignore stockholders and stock value and suddenly start thinking that 'sellers' and 'buyer' are top priority for the corporations. They will do the exact same thing, keep doing whatever they have to increase stock value and appease shareholders.
Don