With all due respect to the person that wrote this article. Who cares about ebay selling skype or ebay motors? They need to sell the whole blanking company. Why not write about the real problem, & the millions & millions of buyers & sellers who will never return? Why not write an article that tells the truth about why this company has self destructed?

This is a very silly article. eBay Inc. as a company is not broken. It needs to change and it is slowly growing up but selling eBay Motors is a short-term gain that will have no long-term benefit. They currently have no debt and $4 Billion in cash in the bank. Should they simply add the money from a potential sale to that pile in the bank?

Eric,

Yes, a touch of silliness, but also thought provoking. It started when I pondered dumping Skype. In the next two posts I even go farther -- auctioning off PayPAL, which might be worth in auction the same as the whole company is today.

Stay tuned and thanks for taking the time to comment.

Bail-out GM/FORD/Chrysler, demand a stake in the business and seats on the board and demand new senior leadership.

I have built my Classic Car Company on Ebay before there was an EbayMotors. If the motors division was to be sold off, my biz would be through. I have attracted US and overseas buyers and built my name over the last 10 years.

I have visitors that come back weekly to view my inventory. People are creatures of habit. If you make a big change as you suggest, they will simply stop trying to find me and give up on Ebay.

Check out my website at http://www.Motoexotica.com or visit me on Ebay with my username: motoexotica. It will be worth the trip down memory lane. While you are at it buy a car too, better investment than a car and you will have pride of ownership too. Thanks!~

I find your article to be somewhat funny. eBay listening or open to discussion? That's funny!

eBay does not listen to anyone period! Stock price of $12.00 proves that, lol.

eBay CEO is arrogant and will remain arrogant all the way down to $5.00 a share. What they need to do is go private! Buy up all their lousy stock and release their shareholders from eBay's nightmare! A few more quarters should do it. Their 4 billion war-chest is a joke. I doubt they even have it!

This company is bound and determined to destroy itself. Fools do not know they are fools you see, and when the ship of fools finally sinks they still will not admit they are fools. eBay CEO has got to go! And he needs to take his ship of fools with him.

Any company that will let a non-paying deadbeat give a good seller a negative in my opinion is a company run by fools! Enough said!

If you are interested in monitoring your active eBay sales and getting an overview of your sales on eBay - this widget that i found might have interest for you.
Data is taken directly from eBay. This enables you to see both your sales forecast for Active Sales as well as the number of items up for auction.
This SmartWidget is great for eBay Power Sellers!

It's free and you simply click the link and insert your username.
Check it out:
http://www.youcalc.com/apps/1218724763465

.. And you can put it on your blog or on your site.

Selling off Motors isn't go to solve any of eBay's problems. Fixing eBay needs to start by getting rid of John Donahoe, who before he was CEO oversaw the marketplaces business for years as it lost growth, pissed off customers, and squandered its unique place in the market. He tried to make eBay into Amazon, selling new commodity items by large corporate sellers, in the name of Wall St. satsfying growth. In the meantime this made it much more difficult for the small, independent, and individual sellers to use the site... and these were the people who were best served by eBay. He basically threw out the baby with the bathwater.

IMHO, eBay is a perfect example of a company that never needed to go public in the first place. They were profitable from day one and have been forced to make bad short term decisions to satisfy Wall St. analysts (and we all know how much they ever knew) at the cost of sustainable growth. Going public succeeded in making a few hundred people obscenely rich, but nothing else. These founders and early employees would still be very wealthy AND would have a well-run business if they hadn't gone public.

you need to get real

eBay isn't in any sort of doldrums. It has managed to hold off yahoo and google and almost has a monopoly in the auction marketplace in the US. It now has to focus on improving customer satisfaction (which monopolies can find hard to do) as well as growth in non-saturated markets like Asia, and why sell off its most profitable asset. As the economy slows down and dealers go out of business, ebay motors will still be serving people throughout the US.

It has also tremendously improved its developer program, helping create a number of useful 3rd party applications. I am listing one i maintain below:

http://FindYourAuto.net