NEG Meg The Series

Welcome to the www.NegMeg.com NEG Meg Whitman news archive.

“a monkey could drive this train”
Margaret “Meg” Whitman comment on eBay,
while she was eBay CEO and President.

Margaret Cushing “Meg” Whitman
Born August 4 1956

• “President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008.”

NEG Meg The Series Episodes

NEG Meg The Series 1998

CEO Employment Letter between eBay and Meg Whitman
January 16 1998

• “eBay, Inc. (the “Company” or “eBay”) is pleased to offer you a position as Chief Executive Officer, at a salary, payable twice per month, which is equivalent to a yearly salary of $175,000.00. In addition, you will be eligible for an annual bonus up to $100,000.00 solely at the discretion of the Board of Directors.”
• “You will also be entitled to the benefits that ebay customarily makes available to employees in positions comparable to yours and it will be recommended to the Board of Directors that you be granted an option for the purchase of 800,000 shares of the Company’s Common Stock.”

Women on the Move
Deeanne McClain, August 24 1998

• “Meg Whitman has been named the new CEO of eBay, the rapidly growing online personal trading company. Whitman comes to eBay from Hasbro Inc.’s Preschool Division and is expected to lead eBay to the next level of success, building upon the company’s leadership position in the one-to-one online trading market.”

EBay Suspends Fraud Suspect
December 14 1998

• “suspended a user who is under investigation for cheating customers out of as much as US$100,000, according to a report in the latest issue of Newsweek.” “But the high-flying San Jose, California, company has refused to give refunds to the duped customers, Newsweek reported, suggesting that eBay (EBAY) may be unable to protect its customers from fraud. ”
• “”We feel badly for [the victims] but [they] really do need to take it up with local law enforcement,” eBay chief Meg Whitman”
• “The stock closed Friday at $192″

NEG Meg The Series 1999-2000

NEG Meg The Series 2001

NEG Meg The Series 2002

NEG Meg The Series 2003

NEG Meg The Series 2004

NEG Meg The Series 2005

NEG Meg The Series 2006

NEG Meg The Series 2007

NEG Meg The Series 2008

NEG Meg The Series 2009

Meg Whitman Steps Down from eBay’s Board
Randy Smythe, January 5 2009

• Comments

Meg Whitman to run for Governor of California
Power Sellers Unite, January 6 2009

Meg Whitman resigns from all board positions
Ed, January 6 2009

• “her recent history has shown that whilst she is a capable and dynamic leader during growth of a business, she flounders during stagnation or decline.”

The Shenzhenian Candidate: Meg Whitman Wants to be Governor of California
Chris Kelly, January 6 2009

• “She’s a real person. With a genuine record. Of callous indifference not just to the dignity of labor, but to suffering in general.”

Bain Connection – Corp Raiders & Salvador
wphamilton, January 8 2009

• “In 1984, Bain Capital was financed by Ricardo Poma, Salvadoran billionaire. The founding partners were Mitt Romney, T. Coleman Andrews III, and Eric Kriss. Bain Capital was a spinoff of Bain & Company, whose executives included Mitt Romney (CEO), Meg Whitman (8yrs, VP) and John Donahoe (17 yrs, Managing Director).”
• “The Bain Way, unavoidable in the business of corporate raiding, typically meant slashing jobs, closing plants, moving production overseas. The objective is bottom line return for investors regardless of jobs, local impact, environmental or other considerations, or in some cases even the long term health of the business.”
• “Bain & Company – the consulting firm parent company – saw its revenues plummet in the 80’s, the senior partners accused of looting the company for retirement featherbedding.”

Greed At A Glance
January 12 2009

• “Whitman does seem to have a problem relating to the world outside her rather privileged personal bubble. Even her philanthrophy reeks of regal.”

Don’t Bid on Meg Whitman
Mark Gimein, January 16 2009

• “The reality, however, is that the perception among CEOs that they shine in the public eye is one that comes mainly from the fact that many of them spend their time around subordinates who are eager to reflect their faint glow and pretend it’s a blinding light.”  ”Whitman is typical in this. The adoring press that Whitman got for years as head of eBay (adoring in part because eBay very efficiently shut down reporters who weren’t—for most of the time that I’d worked at Fortune, the company refused to take the magazine’s calls because of an insufficiently flattering story) contrasts starkly with the stiffness you see when you watch her at the Republican Convention—or even at eBay’s own annual eBay Live gathering.”
• “points up the biggest problem with Whitman as a candidate: After years of facing flattery and imagining that it is scrutiny, and reciting catchphrases that will seem appealing only to those who are getting paid to applaud, the average chief executive has developed the misconception that the best way to reach an audience is to say nothing.”
• “chief executives like Whitman are used to saying nothing, sounding like they’re saying nothing, and getting congratulated for it. That, more than any stiffness of style or inexperience in real public scrutiny is what keeps CEOs like Whitman out of elective office.”

eBay’s Meg Whitman to Announce Governor Run Today
Ina Steiner, February 9 2009

• Comments

It’s Official – Meg Runs for California Governor in 2010
Randy Smythe, February 9 2009

• Comments

Meg Whitman to run for Governor of California
Sue Bailey, February 9 2009

• Comments

Whitman settles cybersquatter case — out of court
Shane Goldmacher, February 9 2009

• Comments

Former eBay CEO Wants to be Next California Governor
Chris Crum, February 9 2009

• Comments

Meg Whitman: Small Business Governor?
Stacy Perman, February 9 2009

• Comments
• More Comments

Heavily Vaselined Ex-eBay CEO Running for California Governor
Owen Thomas, February 9 2009

• Comments

Look Out Arnold ~ Meg’s Coming!
Yahoo! Message Boards – eBay Inc. (EBAY), February 9 2009

If Meg Whitman runs California like eBay…
Dan Wilson, February 10 2009

• Comments

CA-Gov: Meg Whitman Is In
Arjun Jaikumar, February 10 2009

• “Ms. Whitman’s most recent claim to fame was presiding over a company which was part and parcel of those job losses, having laid off 10% of its workforce.”
• “Whitman may take some hits among conservatives for not even having been a Republican until 2007″
• Comments

Will Whitman’s eBay Legacy Help or Hurt Bid for Office
Kenneth Corbin, February 11 2009

• “14 percent of likely Republican voters said they backed Whitman”
• “”an argument that her opponents will make that she led the company when the expression inside the company was, ‘Even a monkey could drive this train,’”
• “The auction giant has also come under fire from some who had once been among its most loyal supporters – its sellers.”
• “A lot of the sellers would argue that eBay ultimately failed them”
• Comments

GOP gubernatorial candidate Whitman outlines stands
Michael Finnegen, February 11 2009

Meg Whitman’s Campaign – What’s Old is Not so New…
Robin Swanson, February 11 2009

• “Perhaps they’d like to sneak her into our subconscious since she’s only got a 17 percent favorability rating”

Meg Whitman Can’t Use the Buy it Now Option to Run For Governor
Tawny, February 11 2009

• “Those in the Tech World know Meg Whitman as the grim reaper behind EBay’s downfall”

Can Meg Whitman save California
Patricia Sellers, March 16 2009

• “What dirt are they going to dig up?” That’s one of many questions that Whitman’s friends are firing at her. The best “dirt” on Meg Whitman seems to be that in the past decade, she voted in elections less than half the time. There is “absolutely no excuse for it,” she has been saying in her campaign speeches, but when I ask her about her voting record, she lobs an excuse my way: “I was head down, building eBay, with two teenage sons and a neurosurgeon husband, and traveling half the time,” she says.”
• “there’s no denying that her performance as CEO sputtered in her last three years there. The company’s growth hit a wall. Profits fell. The stock, as high as $59 in late 2004, now trades around $12 a share.”
• “She did acknowledge that she left a bit of a mess at eBay”
• (Steve Poizner) ”Poizner, a Stanford-educated engineer, says, “If voters are looking to rebrand the state, she’s a very attractive candidate. But if voters are looking to rebuild the state, they’ll turn to me.”"
• “Jerry Brown, an energetic campaigner who was governor from 1975 to 1983. Brown displays a mix of ridicule and respect when he describes candidate Meg’s positioning this way: “‘I ran a business. I can buy my campaign. I have zero experience in government. I want to take on the most difficult state government job in America. Therefore, make me governor.’ That’s her campaign.”"
• “When Whitman tried to be a visionary, she sometimes scored (buying PayPal) and other times didn’t: She took a $1.4 billion write-down on Skype, acquired for $3.1 billion. “Did we pay too much? Yes,” she says, while insisting that eBay is better off owning Skype.”

Ada Lovelace Day: Meg Whitman
Dan Wilson, March 24 2009

• “Ada Lovelace Day encourages bloggers to write about women involved in technology and whilst Meg is clearly closely associated with technology, it would be hard to characterise her as a technologist. This has been both a strength and a weakness.”
• Sue [Bailey] said: ”It makes me very sad to think that someone would seek to stop someone else celebrating a person they thought worthy of celebration. That’s what ALD was all about, after all.”

Undoing Meg Whitman’s eBay
Saul Hansell, April 23 2009

• “Before voting for Meg Whitman for governor, California residents would do well to consider what has been happening at eBay since she stepped down as chief executive. John Donahoe, her successor, has pretty much disassembled all of her major strategic moves.”
• “He is undoing her acquisitions of Skype and StumbleUpon. It turns out that neither voice communications nor Web surfing have anything to do with what eBay does.”
• “Ms. Whitman’s plan to build sales of mainstream merchandise easily available elsewhere by using eBay’s structure — seven-day auctions, high merchant fees”

Meg Whitman: a female Checchi or Simon?
Garry South, May 7 2009

• “One of the major problems with wealthy business types attempting to cross over into politics is their own – how shall we say? – inflated self-impression.  Many really do envision themselves as smarter and more accomplished than officeholders who have succeeded in the political system for years or decades.  After all, they’ve run a business, created jobs, “met a payroll.””
• “Whitman’s tenure at eBay was not without controversy or failure.  For the last couple years under Whitman, the company experienced a marked slowdown in growth, and its stock lost half its value.  In 2005, she also engineered the $2.6 billion purchase of Skype, the Internet-based video calling service, believing that eBay buyers and sellers would find talking to each other directly to be peachy keen.  Instead, it turned out to be a lemon, and eBay wrote off Skype and is trying to dump it.”
• “While Whitman was CEO, the company also came under heavy fire for forgeries and stolen items, dishonest sellers and inaccurately described merchandise.  In addition, criticism was leveled at the Whitman-era eBay for generating revenue growth by ever-increasing fees on sellers, which was an unsustainable, self-defeating strategy.”

Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
Ina Steiner, May 7 2009

• “It will be interesting to see if California media will scrutinize what industry insiders call “eBay math” as Whitman continues to tout her record of job creation.”
• Comments

Steve Poizner for California Governor 2010 – Meg No Waay – web video
campaigntvads, May 12 2009

Mad Money Calls Out Whitman
Jim Cramer, June 10 2009

Former eBay honcho Meg Whitman brought her trophy husband
TG Daily Live, Gawker, July 10 2009

• “Former eBay honcho Meg Whitman brought her trophy husband, all the better to ask for gubernatorial campaign donations with.”

How eBay lost the China market
Sherman So, J. Christopher Westland, August 10 2009

• “Many believe Taobao beat global online auction king eBay in China by being free,  but not EachNet founder Bo Shao who sold the company to eBay in July 2003. A key catalyst was “migration”, the decision to terminate EachNet’s homegrown technology platform and move all EachNet users to the eBay US platform, said Shao.”
• “On the day of the migration, traffic to eBay China dropped by half. Despite the serious customer losses, Meg Whitman, then CEO of eBay, only learned about it a month after it occurred, on a visit to Shanghai.”
• “The company thought everything would be fine. After all, EachNet, now eBay China had an overwhelmingly dominant position and it planned to spend an extra $100 million to improve its technology platform and promote eBay’s brand in China. Any new competitors would be easy to crush.”
• “However, nothing went according to plan. A new rival came out of nowhere and eBay retreated from China four years later.“
• “What really caused eBay to lose its dominance in China was its decision to move its technology platform from China to the US”
• “The slow and unstable services frustrated users and caused them to leave eBay China in droves.”
• “After investing nearly $300 million ($180 million for acquiring Eachnet and $100 million as extra budget for its China push), eBay all but threw in the towel. It folded its China operation into a joint venture with Tom Online, a leading mobile value-added services provider in China at the end of 2006.”
• “eBay’s market share had shrunk to 7 percent by the second quarter of 2007″

Ebay still playing with the feedback
Cohibastore.com, September 19 2009

• “Meg&Co let it go for so long that they must have realized they need to monitor the entire site better and see just whats going on. Under Whitman nothing happened but fee increases and an overall degradation of the site. Like it not, JD and his cohorts are trying to fix things, rather than letting it wither on the vine like Meg was. This kind of research and testing is critical.”

Former CEO Whitman likely to take stand in eBay-Craigslist civil trial
Andrew Macintosh, September 26 2009

• “Meg Whitman may have to take time off from her Republican gubernatorial campaign next month to appear as a key witness at a Delaware civil trial featuring Web behemoths eBay and Craigslist.”
• “”The witness list has not been finalized yet, but it’s highly likely she will be testifying,” eBay spokeswoman Maggie Fitzpatrick”
• “As eBay’s former chief executive officer, Whitman allegedly oversaw its aggressive 2004 purchase of a minority 28 percent stake in Craigslist.”
• “Whitman’s involvement in eBay’s dispute with Craigslist stems from the 2004 investment. After she led the efforts to buy a minority stake, eBay launched its own overseas classified advertisement service, called Kijiji.com, in 2005.”
• “In its rival lawsuit in California and in its Delaware court documents, Craigslist alleges that eBay executives misled them from the start about their intentions.”

Steve Poizner – Meg Whitman Did Not Vote For 28 Years
campaigntvads, September 26 2009

While eBay Burned, Whitman Fiddled
Eric Jackson, October 01 2009

• “Whitman’s final years at eBay leave her open to criticism. She promoted a drunken-sailor approach to acquisitions, always overpaying and making little effort to stitch them together. A culmination was the $4.1 billion purchase of Skype in 2005″
• “more damaging in the long-run for eBay than overpaying was that Whitman didn’t get the intellectual property associated with Skype. This has allowed Skype’s founders to now come back and sue eBay for trying to unload the property recently at a valuation of $2.75 billion.”
• “Jan. 1, 2005. Since then, however, eBay has been in a tailspin with the stock down 59% vs. a Nasdaq decline of 3%”
• “Whitman’s last four years on the job in which her pay became dramatically disconnected with eBay’s stock price and her perks started to go through the roof.”
• “between 2005 and 2008, Whitman’s interest had drifted away from increasing the stock price of eBay to increasing her cash compensation and perks. Had anyone seen these clues — and, interestingly, perhaps Skoll did as he liquidated his entire eBay stake in 2006 — they might have pulled the ripcord on owning the stock in 2006 or 2007 when it was trading at $35, before the bottom fell out in the stock and it hit its nadir below $10 this past March.”
• “two years of lavish perks coincided with a time when eBay’s stock dropped 22%, even though Nasdaq was up 17%”
• “Whitman spent more than $1 million on personal air travel in 2006.”
• “They say that while Rome burned, Nero fiddled. At eBay in 2006, while the stock dropped and the Skype merger was a mess, Whitman flew to Hawaii and other locales on a private jet paid for from the shareholders’”
• “this “CEO entitlement mentality” that Whitman adopted in her final years on the job is that she’s passed the habit on to her successor. Donahoe racked up almost $280,000 worth of personal aircraft expenses in his first nine months on the job in 2008.”
• “Donahoe made $13.1 million last year for his nine months as CEO, while eBay’s stock dropped 55%, far wider than Nasdaq’s 30% loss”
• Comments

Call of Shame!
Jane Wells, October 2 2009

• “GM’s joint venture with Ebay [EBAY 22.91 0.21 (+0.93%) ]ended because it didn’t lead to sales.”
• “E-BAIL   Former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman bailed out of voting most of her life. The Sacramento Bee reports that the Republican gubernatorial candidate didn’t even register to vote until 2002, and still missed some major elections after that. Making matters worse, the Bee says Whitman earlier claimed she registered in 1998, which Whitman now says was “a mistake.” Her stumbling responses to reporters’ repeated questions only made matters worse.  Now she says, “I like many Americans was not as engaged as I should have been over the last 20 or 30 years. I was focused on raising a family, on my husband’s career, we moved many, many times, and it is no excuse. My voting record, my registration record is unacceptable. There is no excuse for it.” Let me just say that I raised a family, I supported my husband’s career, and I’ve moved a few times, and I have never missed a major election (and I’ve only missed one minor election). Does that make me material for governor? No, but Whitman’s right, she has no excuse.”

Can Meg Whitman’s eBay success translate in Sacramento?
Ken McLaughlin and Pete Carey, October 4 2009

• “Whitman certainly has her detractors, including many sellers who, ironically, complain that eBay during her reign erected a thicket of rules that were every bit as burdensome as the government regulations she now assails. Sellers also complain that, under pressure to meet Wall Street expectations, eBay under Whitman repeatedly jacked up fees, driving off many sellers and making the site far less profitable for others.”
• “The annual eBay Live! conferences — once an almost-evangelical gathering of buyers and sellers — became “bitch fests,” said Andrew Bergman, operations manager of Alpha & Omega Antiques, which does about $120,000 worth of business on eBay each year. “eBay just got too big for its britches,” he said.”
• “Other Whitman critics say she was simply lucky, having hopped on a bandwagon that was rolling down a road paved in gold.”
• “eBay could have been run by a Labrador retriever,” said Rosalinda Baldwin of the Auction Guild, a 10-year-old watchdog group that monitors complaints at online auction businesses.”
• “After being singled out in a congressional report that called the IPO system rigged and corrupt, Whitman issued an internal memo to eBay employees saying she got the shares because she was a personal client of Goldman Sachs.”
• “two professors who focus on business ethics — David Shapiro at the City University of New York and William Black at the University of Missouri-Kansas City — predict the issue might prove troublesome for her on the campaign trail.”  ”The fact that she could say she could learn no ethical lesson is illustrative of moral blindness,” Black said.”
• “What’s not in dispute is that as the traditional online business began slipping in 2005, Whitman began acquiring companies to boost growth. While PayPal — which currently contributes almost a third of eBay’s revenue — was a grand slam, other acquisitions didn’t work out so well. Clearly the worst decision was buying Skype for $3.1 billion, on the questionable theory that eBay buyers and sellers would flock to the service to talk to each other to close their deals. Whitman eventually admitted she paid too much for Skype, and the company took a $1.4 billion write-down.”

I Stand By My Prediction
ebay_flyer, October 5 2009

• “I didn’t realize that was the deal when I shook Megs hand at Ebay Live 1.
• I’m a legend in the halls of Ebay!
• Ebay Pays My Bills ~ LOL“

The arrogance may be Whitman’s
George Skelton, October 5 2009

• “The political novice who would be governor calls state workers ’selfish and arrogant.’ That isn’t a sound management practice.”
• “a bit grating recently to read that billionaire political novice Meg Whitman had called state civil servants “selfish and arrogant” in officially announcing her candidacy for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.”
• “Whitman felt she had more important things to do than participate in democracy’s most basic civic duty. She couldn’t be bothered. Had little interest in public policy.”  ”Now she wants to be governor. Is that arrogant?”

Who junked eBay’s lawn chairs?
VenturaCountyStar.com, October 5 2009

• “one of Whitman’s first acts after being hired in February 1998 was that she “replaced the lawn chairs with corporate cubicles.”"
• “Steve Westly, also an early eBay executive, I had paraphrased what Westly told me about one of his first acts when he was hired in 1997 as vice president of business development: “to order the office lawn chairs replaced with traditional furniture.”"
• “Adam Cohen’s book “The Perfect Store.” Cohen puts the year of the lawn chairs’ demise at 1997, but credits neither Westly nor Whitman.”

eMeg Stumbles
Jerry Roberts, October 8 2009

• “Steve Poizner, the state’s insurance commissioner, who posted a detailed narrative (tinyurl.com/y85tawr) of her shifting statements, along with a batch of YouTube videos using her own words to question her integrity.”  “Meg Whitman’s different stories on her non-voting record have raised serious concerns as to what is true and what is deception,” said Poizner spokesperson Jarrod Agen.”
• “eBay billionaire’s laissez faire attitude about the most basic duty of citizenship could feed the perception that eMeg has a sense of entitlement, not to mention disdain for the democratic process.”
• [Meg Whitman] ““Go find it””

NEG Meg The Series 2010

:::

The “NEG MEG” phrase was popularized by ‘Ming the Merciless’, an AuctionBytes poster.

NEG Meg The Series is not affiliated with Ming the Merciless or anyone else.  Yet.

Got links?

We’re not finished. We want links. Post a comment with links.

:::

NEG Meg The Series 1999-2000

Welcome to the www.NegMeg.com NEG Meg The Series episode archive.

“a monkey could drive this train”

Margaret “Meg” Whitman comment on eBay,
while she was eBay CEO and President.

Margaret Cushing “Meg” Whitman
Born August 4 1956

• “President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008.”

New insurance could be boon to e-commerce
Dennis Taylor, February 15 1999

• “eBay Inc., the San Jose-based online auctioneer, is the first Internet commerce business to take advantage of a new insurance product offered through a Belmont brokerage. The policy–underwritten by insurance titan Lloyd’s of London and offered through ABD Insurance and Financial Services Inc.–will be available to eBay users beginning in March.”
• “”eBay’s insurance policy protects its “top users” against losses from fradulent transactions up to $200, with a $25 deductible.”
• “”eBay has zero tolerance for fraud,” said eBay CEO Meg Whitman. “These upgrades … are designed to meet the demands of our growing community. We have committed and will continue to commit resources to have the most comprehensive programs to keep eBay a safe harbor for online person-to-person trading.” ”

Defining the On-Line Chief; EBay’s Meg Whitman Explores Management, Web Style
Laura M. Holson, May 10 1999

• “Like legions of graduates coming out of elite business schools in the late 1970’s, Ms. Whitman had taken her Harvard M.B.A. and slipped quietly into a successful career at a blue-chip consulting firm.”
• “”I thought something was very right here,” she said. ”They had touched a consumer nerve.””
• “With no technology background to speak of, Ms. Whitman leaves the heavy lifting to the tech experts.”
• “today’s Internet executives do not have to be computer geniuses, but seasoned brand managers who immerse themselves in the culture they are trying to foster”
• “Ms. Whitman smiled and waved at the man. But the grin faded as she turned away. ”That’s what I hate,” she said. ”I even have the furniture man noticing me.””
• “intermittent problems have persisted, and Ms. Whitman has not hesitated to tap powerful Silicon Valley connections to help her. ”Last January, we were having short outages — 10 to 15 minutes,” she recalled. ”It made everyone here crazy.””
• “Working for Ebay will be her last job, Ms. Whitman said. Her stock options — worth about $1.3 billion as of Friday’s closing price”
• “Alberto Vilar, president of Amerindo Investment Advisors, and one of Ebay’s largest shareholders. ”Anyone who wants to pick her off as a second-rate manager is barking up the wrong tree.”  ”But though a fan of Ms. Whitman, Mr. Vilar sounded the kind of warning that is an implicit part of being one of today’s new Web chiefs: ”Her board and shareholders are going to lynch her if she doesn’t execute.””

Q&A with eBay’s Meg Whitman
BusinessWeek, May 31 1999

• [Meg Whitman] “We get a commission, a listing fee, and a commission on that. But the gross margin on that is far higher, and obviously we make money as opposed to not make money.”
• [Meg Whitman] “Amazon’s a very competitive company, and I think they are a very good competitor, and we take them very, very seriously. I think the proof will be in the pudding. You know, we are still looking for signs of momentum, and so far, they have not gotten traction.”

Meg Muscles eBay Uptown
Daniel Roth, July 5 1999

• “But what if, on the Internet, little people matter?”
• “Increasingly, it seems, eBay is a company at war with itself. The swap fest that has been endlessly touted as the Internet’s happiest marketplace” “is fast evolving into something rather different. While Whitman continues to hype eBay’s touchy-feely communitarianism, she’s quietly and rapidly overhauling the company in service of a goal the staunchest capitalist would understand: pleasing Wall Street.”
• “She is gearing the site increasingly to big-ticket items and big sellers” “even at the risk of alienating small ones.”

U.S. Justice Department Launches eBay Anti-Competitive Probe
E-Commerce Times, February 4 2000

• “The U.S. Justice Department is reportedly investigating online auctioneer eBay, Inc. to determine whether its efforts to block price comparison search software from probing its Web site are anti-competitive.”

Meg Whitman
Jim Kerstetter, May 15 2000

• “Meg Whitman, CEO of pioneering online auctioneer eBay Inc. (EBAY), remains the czarina of Net auctions–and that’s saying a lot. Three tough competitors, Amazon.com (AMZN), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Lycos (LCOS) tried to knock eBay from its perch. It didn’t happen.”
• “She avoids burnout by escaping to her husband’s family farm in Sweetwater, Tenn.
• [Meg Whitman] “”The culture at a lot of these companies is going to have to change,”

Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley
August 2000

• “Benchmark Capital sometimes won and sometimes lost, but the winners far outnumbered the losers. Formed in 1995, Benchmark sunk money into 73 companies during the next four years. Only three failed, and some like eBay had succeeded spectacularly.”
• “Benchmark not only invested in eBay, but it also recruited Meg Whitman to run the fledging enterprise”
• “Working with investment bank Goldman Sachs, Meg Whitman and founder Pierre Omidar made their pitch to dozens of investors, and on September 24th, 1998, the stock opened at $18 a share.”

:::

Got links?

We’re not finished. We want links. Post a comment with links.

NEG Meg The Series 2001

Welcome to the www.NegMeg.com NEG Meg The Series episode archive.

“a monkey could drive this train”

Margaret “Meg” Whitman comment on eBay,
while she was eBay CEO and President.

Margaret Cushing “Meg” Whitman
Born August 4 1956

• “President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008.”

Charlie Rose – A conversation about eBay
March 7 2001

• “EBay president and CEO Meg Whitman tells the story of her company and discusses plans for future growth.”

Trade Deficit
Ditherati, May 28 2001

• “I think we’ve actually exported fraud too Yahoo”
• “eBay CEO Meg Whitman”

eBay to Lawmakers: No to Anti-Fraud Legislation, Yes to Anti-Harvesting Legislation
Ina Steiner, June 28 2001

eBay picks up PayPal for $1.5 billion
Margaret Kane, July 8 2001

• “eBay said it is acquiring online payments company PayPal in a deal valued at $1.5 billion. eBay will also phase out its own competing service, eBay Payments by Billpoint.”
• “eBay bought Billpoint in May 1999 but did not fully launch the service until spring 2000. Despite heavy promotion, Billpoint has struggled to win market share from PayPal.”
• “”eBay and PayPal have built vibrant user networks on the Internet,” PayPal CEO Peter Thiel”
• “PayPal also brings other problems to the table. A few states have begun to question whether the business constitutes illegal banking or money-transmitting services. PayPal also faces several class-action lawsuits from customers who claim the company illegally froze their accounts.”
• “PayPal users have a love-hate relationship with the service mostly because of customer service problems”

eBay Creates Charity Auction with $100M Goal
Keith Regan, September 18 2001

• “challenged its massive community to raise US$100 million in 100 days”
• “eBay itself gave $1 million to the fund”

eBay Launches ‘Auction for America’
Beth Cox, September 18 2001

• “Analysts are concerned it will affect the company’s bottom line”
• “third quarter of 2001, which call for earnings of 11 cents per share on $185 million in net revenues”
• “analysts with Goldman, Sachs & Co. aren’t quite as confident about those numbers”
• “ChannelAdvisor, meanwhile, said it is waiving all fees”

eBay Charity Efforts Draw Cynicism, Complaints
Lori Enos, September 19 2001

• “Some eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) users, questioning both the auction giant’s motives and requirements for a charity auction benefiting victims of last week’s terrorist attacks on the United States, are accusing the company of building its corporate image at their expense.”
• “Users are also complaining because eBay has said that the only acceptable payment form for Auction for America items is Billpoint. Some view the charity auctions as a mere ruse to gain users for Billpoint.”
• Comments

TAGnotes Sun 23 Sep 2001 Vol 3 Number 101 Issue 362
The Auction Guild, September 23 2001

• “Billpoint accounts were showing sales from their non Auction of America sale items were being donated regardless.”
• “ebaY cannot be relied upon to keep Billpoint off auctions where it is not wanted, nor to keep accounts correct.”
• “ebaY refused all efforts from PayPal to participate in Auction of America”  ”ebaY continued to insist that all participants must use Billpoint and Billpoint only”
• “TAG finds it interesting that ebaY is exploiting this disaster for their
  own profitability”
• Comments

Charlie Rose – A conversation with CEO of  eBay Meg Whitman
October 1 2001

• “A conversation with CEO of eBay Meg Whitman about the effort to raise money for the victims of September 11th.”

eBay Allows Shipping Reimbursement for Auction for America Charity Items
Ina Steiner, October 2 2001

• “eBay stated that, “every indication is that Auction for America is introducing new bidders to eBay, so we urge all our users, both buyers and sellers, to take advantage of this opportunity to meet new customers”

eBay charity auction faces uphill climb
Troy Wolverton, October 22 2001

• “San Jose, Calif.-based online auction company has raised just $5 million, or 5 percent of its goal, as of Friday. And that includes $1 million that came from eBay itself.”
• “sellers were upset by the charity effort. Some said the company was taking credit for their donations, while others accused eBay of using Auction for America to promote its proprietary payment system, Billpoint. eBay is requiring buyers to use Billpoint to pay for Auction for America items.”
• “”I think it would have been far higher than $5 million if they hadn’t botched this thing when they put it together,” said the seller, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “This was and is one of the most divisive things I’ve seen them do.”"

EBay chief executive toasts Comdex crowd
Ian Fried, November 15 2001

• “EBay chief executive Meg Whitman used her Comdex Fall 2001 keynote speech to toast the company’s newest category: wine.”
• “”We think it’s a big market; we think it’s a fun market,” Whitman told the Comdex crowd. “I think you might be some of our best, first customers.”"
• “It’s a return to alcohol sales for eBay, which two years ago banned sales of beer, wine and other alcoholic beverages. At the time, the company attributed the ban to the complications of selling and shipping alcoholic beverages across state lines.”
• “uring her speech, Whitman also addressed the recent uproar over its new checkout feature, saying that while it was popular with many buyers and sellers, some sellers were “not enthusiastic to say the least.”"

Meg Whitman
Loren Fox, November 27 2001

• “Sure, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos was Time magazine’s man of the year, and Tim Koogle was the new-media savant who made Yahoo the top Web portal, but Whitman was the old-fashioned, low-key manager. And the tortoise has beaten the hares. Yahoo has slipped from profitable to unprofitable, and Wall Street wonders if the never-profitable Amazon.com will survive. But eBay is doing fine”
• “”What is really interesting about eBay,” she told one interviewer, “is that we provide the marketplace, but it is the users who build the company. They bring the product to the site, they merchandise the product and they distribute it once sold.”"
• “As she told Business Week, she wasn’t interested — “I’m not thinking about living 3,000 miles across the country, uprooting my neurosurgeon husband, and taking my two boys out of school, to go to the West Coast for this no-name Internet company.”"
• “Whitman also set about making eBay more corporate. She created the company’s first national advertising strategy. She recruited executives from places such as PepsiCo. She pushed for stores and companies to sell on eBay, so now corporations such as Sun Microsystems sell millions of dollars worth of products a year via the site. She encouraged eBay to offer various specialty sites under the eBay umbrella — much the way FTD’s global Web site, under her watch, included individual florists’ shops under the FTD banner. Whitman also installed a trust and safety program, which offered insurance for buyers. In making the place more corporate, she made it more professional.”
• “”eBay is an outstanding example of loyalty,” said Bain & Co. consultant Frederick Reichheld, author of “Loyalty Rules!”"
• “Whitman managed to expand the company without destroying its community, maintaining what she calls “the small-town feel on a global scale.”"
• “Whitman may be calm, but she’s ambitious.”

:::

Got links?

We’re not finished. We want links. Post a comment with links.

NEG Meg The Series 2002

Welcome to the www.NegMeg.com NEG Meg The Series episode archive.

“a monkey could drive this train”

Margaret “Meg” Whitman comment on eBay,
while she was eBay CEO and President.

Margaret Cushing “Meg” Whitman
Born August 4 1956

• “President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008.”

eBay’s “Auction for America” Comes to an End
January 4 2002

• “100,000 Users Raise $10 Million”
• “Whitman. “By sharing the fundraising tool developed for ‘Auction for America,’ we hope to make eBay useful to even more groups.”"

Meg Whitman to support new residential college at Princeton
Princeton University, February 4 2002

• “Meg Whitman, president and chief executive officer of eBay, Inc., a Princeton University trustee and member of the class of 1977, is making a gift of $30 million toward the construction of a new residential college at the University. The new college, to be named Whitman College, will enable Princeton to expand its undergraduate student body and provide more varied educational and social opportunities for students.”
• “The gift from Whitman and her family, including her husband, Dr. Griffith R. Harsh IV, permits the University to proceed with plans announced almost two years ago to build a sixth residential college and expand the student body by 10 percent.”
• “”I had a great time as a Princeton undergraduate,” said Whitman. “The University inspired me to think in ways that have guided me throughout my life. I’m pleased that I can help bring Princeton to more students and that my gift will benefit the University for generations to come.”"

eBay touts anti-fraud software’s might
Rachel Konrad, June 5 2002

• “But Whitman said the technology has already helped eBay reduce its fraudulent sales rate, which she said is at less than one-tenth of 1 percent”
• “given the fact that eBay has 9 million items for sale on any given day and will likely process $13 billion in gross merchandise sales in 2002, small percentages could add up to thousands of dollars wasted on hundreds of fraudulent transactions each day”

Fraud lingers despite eBay efforts
Troy Wolverton, June 28 2002

Ebay Inc 425 Paypal Inc SEC File 000-49603
July 8 2002

• “This filing relates to a proposed merger between eBay Inc. (the “Company”) and  PayPal, Inc. (“PayPal”) pursuant to the terms of an Agreement and Plan of  Merger, dated as of July 7, 2002, among PayPal, the Company and Vaquita Acquisition Corp. “
• “transcript of the conference call”
• “”Joining me are Meg Whitman, eBay’s President
  and CEO, Peter Thiel, PayPal’s Founder and CEO, and Rajiv Dutta, eBay’s Chief Financial Officer.”"
• “”Approximately 60% of PayPal’s gross payment volume comes from eBay transactions”"
• “”this transaction gives eBay the ability to participate in a larger share of online commerce”"
• “”our expertise in building a vibrant and abundant marketplace”"

EBay Buys PayPal in $1.3B Stock Deal
Brian Bergstein, July 8 2002

• “”It brings together two companies in a way that will benefit our users,” eBay’s chief executive, Meg Whitman”
• “EBay shares then fell $4.31, or 7.1 percent, to close at $56.24″
• “60 percent of the $13 billion in merchandise sold annually on eBay is paid by check or money order”
• “regulators in some states have questioned whether PayPal might need to be licensed as a bank”
• “Wells Fargo & Co. agreed last month to handle PayPal’s credit card business”

eBay/PayPal Acquisition Decision Expected Today
Ina Steiner, August 19 2002

• “The Justice Department is investigating the proposed acquisition of PayPal by eBay for antitrust concerns.”
• “The government wants to know if consumers would be hurt by eBay’s acquisition of PayPal. Government regulators use various methods to make a determination, including what is called the 5% test. Government investigators will try to guess what would happen if PayPal raised its prices by 5%. Would customers shift to a different payment service? If so, then there is competition in the marketplace.”

Ebay execs defend IPO share grab
Troy Wolverton, October 24 2002

• “Whitman sent the email to eBay employees earlier this month to address a Congressional report. The report revealed that eBay chairman Pierre Omidyar, co-founder Jeff Skoll, director Bob Kagle and Whitman received shares for various initial public offerings from investment firm Goldman Sachs.”
• “Whitman, who gained $1.78m (£1.14m) from selling IPO shares, said in the email that her actions and those of her fellow eBay executives were above board.”
• “”While reasonable people can debate whether giving private banking clients preferred access to IPO shares is fair or whether policies regarding such transactions should be reformed, there is no question about the legality of this practice today,” Whitman said.”
• “”When I bought and then sold my shares, I followed the law as well as Goldman Sachs’ policies regarding these transactions.”"
• “And never have my personal banking and investing practices guided any of eBay’s decisions or activities associated with Goldman Sachs or any other investment banking firm,” Whitman said.”
• “As part of an investigation, a federal government committee revealed earlier this month that Goldman Sachs had allocated IPO shares to executives such as Whitman, Enron chairman Kenneth Lay and WorldCom chief executive John Sidgmore.”
• “Ebay has a longstanding relationship with Goldman Sachs. The investment bank led eBay’s IPO and served as a financial adviser in its recent merger with PayPal. Whitman sits on the firm’s board of directors.”
• “”Some of you have heard me say that whatever you do in life, you should never, under any circumstances, compromise your integrity. I live by that rule and know that Pierre, Jeff and Bob do too,” Whitman said in her email.”
• “”The last 24 hours have been painful for me. There is nothing worse than having your integrity questioned under circumstances where you know that you did nothing wrong and followed all the rules. Given my experience yesterday, I plan to participate in the growing national debate about corporate governance and business ethics,” Whitman said.”

:::

Got links?

We’re not finished. We want links. Post a comment with links.

NEG Meg The Series 2003

Welcome to the www.NegMeg.com NEG Meg The Series episode archive.

“a monkey could drive this train”

Margaret “Meg” Whitman comment on eBay,
while she was eBay CEO and President.

Margaret Cushing “Meg” Whitman
Born August 4 1956

• “President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008.”

Meg and the Machine
Adam Lashinsky, August 11 2003

• “Our destiny is completely in our hands”
• “”This company is truly built by the community of users.” It’s a little like Frank Perdue crediting his chickens.”
• “the suspicion that eBay runs itself”
• “A monkey could drive this train”
• “Many of us say, ‘Man, we’ve got something special. Don’t screw it up.’
• “Whitman also closely eyes eBay’s “take rate,” the ratio of revenues to the value of goods traded on the site (the higher the better).”
• “”Our best decisions have been the ones where we’ve seen where the community was going,” says PayPal chief Matt Bannick. “Some of our biggest mistakes occurred when we put on our consultant’s hats and got in a room and made decisions.” ”

Meg Whitman, eBay
BusinessWeek, September 29 2003

• “Says Whitman, a big eBay seller herself: “We simply try to make it easy and transparent, lay out a few rules, and get the heck out of the way.”"

:::

Got links?

We’re not finished. We want links. Post a comment with links.

NEG Meg The Series 2004

Welcome to the www.NegMeg.com NEG Meg The Series episode archive.

“a monkey could drive this train”

Margaret “Meg” Whitman comment on eBay,
while she was eBay CEO and President.

Margaret Cushing “Meg” Whitman
Born August 4 1956

• “President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008.”

Ebay to Increase Investment in China’s Eachnet.com
AsiaInfo Services, April 19 2004

• “Meg Whitman, president of the America-based eBay, revealed in Beijing on April 14 that eBay would increase the investment in China’s Eachnet.Com, an onlinemarket in China.”
• “In 2003, eBay acquired the whole stock from the American Eachnet.Com at USD 150 million.”

EBay’s Whitman Tells Feds: Read My Lips
John Soat, May 10 2004

• “Meg Whitman, president and CEO of eBay, the online auction site, addressed the National Press Club in Washington last week to extol the virtues of entrepreneurship on the Web and blast a proposal for collecting taxes on Internet sales known as the Streamlined Sales Tax Project. “The success of E-commerce is the success of millions of invisible pioneers in garages and spare bedrooms from New York to St. Louis, from L.A. to Sioux City,” Whitman said, according to the text of her remarks from the company. EBay estimates more than 430,000 Americans make a substantial part of their incomes by selling products on its site. Government policy makers threaten the future of small business on the Internet with tax proposals like SSTP, Whitman said. SSTP is not a new tax law, but a uniform way for the states to collect sales taxes from online businesses for items purchased over the Internet. “The red tape would be enormous,” she said. For instance, “were SSTP adopted, it could double or even triple the nation’s taxing jurisdictions.” Prior to Whitman’s appearance at the National Press Club, eBay sponsored what it called its first “United States of eBay Small Business Summit,” flying in 51 of its top entrepreneurs, representing the 50 states and Washington, D.C., to meet with members of Congress about E-commerce issues, including taxes.”

Tiffany sues eBay, says fake items sold on Web site
Lisa Baerlein, June 22 2004

• “Luxury jeweler Tiffany & Co. has sued eBay inc., claiming the online auctioneer has aided violations of the Tiffany trademark by letting counterfeit items be sold on its Web site”
• “if;”>A study of certain pieces of “Tiffany” jewelry sold on eBay this year showed that 73% of the jewelry was counterfeit, Mark Aaron, a Tiffany spokesman, said in a statement about the lawsuit, which was filed Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court in New York.”
• “Tiffany shares rose 21 cents, or 0.6%, to $37.94 on the New York Stock Exchange.”
• “Shares of eBay fell 69 cents, or 0.8%, to $85.81 on Nasdaq, down from a high of $87.24 earlier in the day.”
• “”We take these concerns very seriously, which is why we have worked closely with Tiffany and thousands of other rights owners for many years through our VeRO program to help them address these types of issues,” the eBay spokesman, Hani Durzy, said.”

eBay buys into Craigslist
Dinesh C. Sharma, August 13 2004

• “eBay has acquired a 25 percent stake in Craigslist, an online listing of classified ads and forums.”

EBay’s PayPal hit by glitches in online payments
Lisa Baertlein, October 12 2004

• “The online payment problem came at the start of eBay’s seasonally biggest quarter for revenues and roughly four months after the company apologized for a run of billing and search snafus that disrupted some of the auction site’s most dedicated sellers.”
• “Shares in eBay closed $1.14 higher at $93.73 on Monday on the Nasdaq stock exchange.”

Fraudsters go Phishing on eBay
Paul Mutton, October 15 2004

• “The fraudsters make the scam look more plausible by setting up a number of illicit eBay user accounts. One of these accounts is used to sell items, which are then instantly purchased for a small price by the remaining accounts. Trust on eBay is typically gauged by the amount of positive feedback left for a user, and this method allows a reasonable level of positive feedback to be generated in a matter of minutes.”

eBay cleans up online
Clare Matheson, October 21 2004

• “China was a key Asian target for the company. Boss Meg Whitman and eBay’s then international vice president Stephanie Telenius snapped up a start-up firm called EachNet.”
• “The rest is history – China is now eBay’s fastest-growing market.”
• “The group now has its eyes on India, snapping up Baazee.com – the country’s biggest online retailer -in August for $50m, even though only 1.6% of its population is on the net.”
• “It was too slow off the mark in Japan – setting out its stall there five months after Yahoo.”
• “Two years later it pulled out of the market”

Meg Whitman for U.S. President in 2012
Strategist, October 21 2004

• “With a successful run like Meg’s over at eBay, I wonder if the voters will try to bring her into the ‘wild and wacky’ world of U.S. politics in 2012. I sure hope so.”

:::

Got links?

We’re not finished. We want links. Post a comment with links.

NEG Meg The Series 2005

Welcome to the www.NegMeg.com NEG Meg The Series episode archive.

“a monkey could drive this train”

Margaret “Meg” Whitman comment on eBay,
while she was eBay CEO and President.

Margaret Cushing “Meg” Whitman
Born August 4 1956

• “President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008.”

Is eBay for everyone? An assessment of consumer demographics
SAM Advanced Management Journal, January 01 2005

• “During 2003 alone, approximately 40 million households in the U.S. made at least one purchase from the Internet, up from only six million in 1994″
• “CEO of eBay, Margaret C. Whitman, described eBay as a “dynamic self-regulating economy,”"

Motley Fool Profiles: EBay CEO Meg Whitman
February 4 2005

• “shares have lost one-third of their value in the last month. David talks all things eBay with CEO Meg Whitman”

Ebay sees e-commerce potential in China
Martyn Williams, February 11 2005

• “”We are doubling down in China because the potential for Internet commerce in that country is simply extraordinary,” Meg Whitman”
• “”Behind that growth will be 170 million middle-class households by 2010,” Whitman said. “In short, five to 10 years from now, (a company’s) share of e-commerce in China is likely to be the defining measure of business success on the Net.”"
• “EBay entered China in 2002 when it bought one third of EachNet.com Corp. for $30 million. It acquired the remaining two thirds a year later for an additional $150 million.”
• “”What we are focused on there is not only our leadership position in the marketplace business, but securing the leadership position in e-commerce overall in China,” Whitman said”
• [Meg Whitman] “”We are on a tear to be the undisputed winner in China and the additional $100 million investment we announced last month should be a sign of an unmistakable commitment and an unstoppable determination to win that market.”"
• “Whitman dismissed eBay’s rivals in China as “a bunch of small competitors … nipping at our heels,”"
• “eBay reported good business at its South Korean unit, Internet Auction Co. Ltd., of which it owns 99.7 percent.”
• “”Internet Auction achieved $1 billion in gross merchandise volume faster than any Korean retailer has ever done,” Whitman said at the analyst conference this week. “One out of every two Koreans between the ages of 20 and 40 are registered Internet Auction company users.”"
• “EBay’s excursions in Asia haven’t all gone well, however. Its Japanese service was launched in early 2000 and then closed in March 2002″

Aust eBay users demand faster fraud responses
Angus Kidman, February 17 2005

• Comments

EBay’s Joy Ride: Going Once …
Gary Rivlin, March 6 2005

• “The thing to know about the eBay community,” she said, “is that it’s been vocal from Day 1.” Ms. Whitman allowed that the dissatisfied had lately “perhaps been a tad more vocal than in the past.”
• “William C. Cobb, who oversees the company’s North American operations, called the “constant drone” of complaints on the company’s message boards”

In eBay’s Success May Lie Hints of Trouble Ahead
Knowledge@Wharton, March 09 2005

• “eBay may not have the pricing power it thought it had. A recent price increase in fees for posting photos and other advanced features wasn’t handled well, and some customers revolted. Following complaints, eBay issued an open letter to customers and announced it reduced listing fees on items below 99 cents to 25 cents from 30 cents. eBay raises fees annually.”  ”Chaudhuri acknowledges that eBay could have handled its price increases better. “eBay wasn’t savvy about it. At other companies like Procter & Gamble there’s a more formal process and a scientific way to evaluate the impact of price increases. eBay has been so successful that it didn’t expect any pushback.”"  ”That kind of flub shows just one of the challenges eBay faces.”

10 years ago, eBay changed the world
Kevin Maney, March 21 2005

• “CEO Meg Whitman — considered the most powerful woman in business; recently courted by Walt Disney to be its next CEO — says she agreed in 1997 to interview for eBay’s top job … why? “In order not to make the headhunter mad,” she says.”
• [Meg Whitman] “”This is a completely new business, so there’s only so much analysis you can do,” she says. “It’s better to put something out there and see the reaction and fix it on the fly. You could spend six months getting it perfect in the lab or six days in the lab, and we’re better off spending six days, putting it out there, getting feedback and then evolving it.”
• “EBay recently raised listing prices and faced an outcry from sellers. Its first-quarter profit fell short of Wall Street’s expectations”
• “All have different needs, but Whitman says she’s resisted making a quilt of rules. ”We could end up with a Web site so complicated, a mortal can’t understand it,” she says.

Tentative Settlement Reached in eBay Stock ‘Spinning’ Lawsuit
Ina Steiner, April 29 2005

• “”spinning,” the now-banned practice by which investment banking firms would dole out to favorite clients the lucrative opportunity to purchase shares in initial public offerings they were underwriting. The complaint alleges that Goldman allotted such opportunities to senior eBay executives in order to secure their position as eBay’s investment banker, and that these executives should have offered that opportunity to eBay itself. ”
• “Delaware Chancellor Chandler issued an opinion denying defendants’ motion to dismiss the action, holding that the receipt of IPO allocations, under these circumstances, could be a breach of fiduciary duty, and that the directors of eBay were too beholden to the defendants”
• “settlement payment of $3,395,000 represents almost all the profits the individual defendants have actually realized”
• “eBay Chairman Pierre Omidyar, eBay CEO Meg Whitman, former eBay vice president Jeff Skoll, and Goldman Sachs”
• “Marsha Collier, a successful eBay PowerSeller, is Entrepreneur.com’s “eBay” columnist as well as the author of the bestselling eBay references, eBay for Dummies, 4th Edition and Starting an eBay Business for Dummies.”

What to Expect at eBay Live!
Marsha Collier, June 20 2005

• “I asked readers to write to me and let me know how they were dealing with the eBay fee increase that took effect earlier this year.”
• “my combined eBay and PayPal fees now hover at around 9 percent of my total sales. Not bad!”

EBay losing allure to some entrepreneurs
Rachel Konrad, June 27 2005

• “some say eBay’s blockbluster growth has engendered arrogance”
• “Entrepreneurs grumble that executives pander to big-ticket electronics vendors and industrial manufacturers”
• “complain about shoddy customer service, including site crashes”
• “”I hope eBay gets the message: People have choices, and if we’re not happy we’ll look elsewhere,”"
• “”EBay’s taking a hands-off approach to fraud that makes some users uncomfortable”"
• “EBay has also gained a reputation as unresponsive to complaints, a company that acts like an unregulated monopoly”
• “”Sometimes it’s a little bit like being a politician,” Whitman said. “We have work to do in understanding our users’ sentiments.”"

EBay Sellers Fell Into Careers That Fill Their Lives
Leslie Walker, June 30 2005

• “eBay reports more than 100,000 merchants belong to its multi-tiered “power-seller” group, which requires sales of at least $1,000 a month and carries various perks. The color-coded levels of the sales club start at bronze and progress to titanium, which requires monthly sales of $150,000. That sounds like a lot, but remember, actual profits are a fraction of sales.”
• “eBay millionaires likely represent a tiny fraction of the 430,000 people earning income selling on the site”
• “In 2003, the most recent year eBay conducted a major survey of its users, the company estimated there were nearly 4 million sellers on eBay in the United States. Nearly 120,000 were using the site as their primary or only source of income; another 310,000 used it as a secondary sales channel”

EBay developing new search, fraud protection services
Juan Carlos Perez, July 21 2005

• “new product search system, called Magellan, is being tested now and is the company’s “next generation search capability,” Whitman said”
• “”Finding is incredibly important on eBay. The more effective we can make finding, the higher the [sales] conversion rates and the more robust the marketplace is for buyers and sellers,” she said”

Margaret (Meg) Whitman, The Most Powerful Women
Elizabeth MacDonald and Chana R. Schoenberger, July 28 2005

• “As ruler of the world’s biggest online auction site, Whitman, 49, has successfully beaten back stiff competition from Amazon.com and Yahoo!.”

Let the Customers Run the Company
Jack Otter, August 1 2005

• “Wall Street has punished eBay this year, sending its shares down 37 percent, to a recent $37″
• “We think of our customers as people, not wallets. And that has implications for how we run the company. We partner with our customers and let them take the company where they think it’s best utilized.”
• “with its coffers bulging with $1.2 billion of cash, will it pay dividends or buy back its shares to bolster its stock price? “We are not averse to returning excess cash to shareholders,” says CEO Meg Whitman, “and at some point we will almost certainly do that. The question is, when do we have strategic reserves that are enough, and when do we run out of good uses for that cash? And what we’ve said so far is, we don’t feel like we’ve reached that point.”"

Asian Brand Drama: Who Needs Desperate Housewives?
August 28 2005

• “CEO Meg Whitman told analysts that China was a “must win” and “likely to be the defining measure of business success.” It has promised to spend $100 million this year in China”
• “eBay is a classic customer-economy brand, having grown with minimal advertising and lots of word of mouth from passionate advocates. It has also attracted a lot of negative press by raising fees, placing the burden of fraud detection on its buyers and sellers, and abysmal customer support that amounted to little more than automated emails.”
• “Internationally, eBay failed so miserably in Japan it was forced to exit the market in 2002.”

SkypeBay done for $4.1 Billion
Om Malik, September 11 2005

• “It is a tactical admission that the fraud on eBay is so huge, that the company had to spend considerable amount of dollars to do something about it.”
• “down 1.81 percent to $37.93″
• Comments

Meg Whitman’s $2.6bn spam goof?
Andrew Orlowski, September 13 2005

• “eBay hopes to monitize the user based by selling their account details to junk callers, at $2 to $12 per lead. Whether Skype users even get the chance to opt-out from this new form of “voice spam” remains to be seen, but eBay’s Whitman could have chosed a better example of ’synergy’.

Why Did eBay Bid on Skype?
Jyoti Thottam, September 14 2005

• “Why is eBay spending $2.6 billion to buy a $60 million Internet phone company called Skype that has yet to turn a profit? During a presentation to investors this week, eBay CEO Meg Whitman used 75 PowerPoint slides to justify her intense, and expensive, interest in Skype, but analysts are skeptical.”
• “Rajiv Dutta, eBay’s chief financial officer, did not exactly clarify matters by posing the rhetorical question, “How do we make 1+1 equal to greater than 2?”"
• “suggests that the deal is a desperate attempt by eBay to find new subscribers and to stem fraud”

Meg Whitman
October 9 2005

• “bobalbobal // <![CDATA[
  document.write('(326');
  // ]]>(326(326)) Oct 9, 2005 4:14 PM     I have spent some time with Meg, had three hugs and kisses on stage before an huge audience for two of them and one in the Pink’s lounge this year.  She is such a down to earth lady and a great pleasure to talk to. She shares a cupola with three of her top men in the company, wears the eBay colors shirt and slacks that many employees do. When you enter the third floor, you will pass by Megs open office just as you do everyone elses, nothing special.  She never shows her power and wealth as Pierre doesn’t either. You could meet Meg in the super market and not know it because she is as common as any of us are.  I am happy to have her as a friend and look forward to seeing her again someday. Bob’s Tips“
• “gs_entgs_ent // <![CDATA[
  document.write('(7961');
  // ]]>(7961(7961)) Oct 11, 2005 4:56 PM     Hubby and I have met Meg at the stockholder’s meetings twice. Although we are relatively small stockholders, she was as gracious with us as with others. She listened attentively to our concerns and signed my husband’s baseball with a laugh. Yes, my weird husband wanted, and got, a baseball autographed by Meg, Pierre, and Bill Cobb. He calls it his billionaire ball.     Steeno Collectibles Straight from the Lone Star State”

Voice phone calls to be free within years: eBay CEO
October 21 2005

• “Seeking to justify eBay’s US$4 billion purchase last week of web-based communications phenomenon Skype Technologies, Meg Whitman countered criticism by a financial analyst during the company’s quarterly conference call”
• “”In the end, the price that anyone can provide for voice transmission on the ‘Net will trend toward zero,” eBay’s top executive said.”
• “Whitman said Skype’s explosive success, would — over the next several years — drive the cost of phone calls to nothing.”

:::

Got links?

We’re not finished. We want links. Post a comment with links.

NEG Meg The Series 2006

Welcome to the www.NegMeg.com NEG Meg The Series episode archive.

“a monkey could drive this train”

Margaret “Meg” Whitman comment on eBay,
while she was eBay CEO and President.

Margaret Cushing “Meg” Whitman
Born August 4 1956

• “President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008.”

Meg Whitman says eBay transformation is under way
Simon Taylor, February 6 2006

• “EBay Inc. is fast moving away from its roots as an online auction site and becomming an electronic-commerce site, President and Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman said at a press conference Tuesday in Brussels.”
• Comments

India to be vibrant e-marketplace, says eBay CEO Meg Whitman
The Indian Express, February 24 2006

• “MUMBAI, FEBRUARY 23: Meg Whitman, President and CEO of e-commerce giant eBay, was in town today as part of a truncated first trip to India. Emphasising the focus on India (ebay acquired Baazee.com in 2004), Whitman said the country was among the top three fastest-growing markets in the world. Excerpts from an exclusive interaction:“
• [China & India] “I believe that in the long term both markets will be very important for eBay’s marketplace business.”
• “We’re focused on working with our local community of buyers and sellers to make eBay India an even more vibrant marketplace for trade.”
• “Now more than half of our registered users and the gross merchandise sales they generate come from outside the US”
• “Acquiring Baazee.com in India, for example, was a perfect fit with our own marketplace business and it’s been a great success. As the Internet evolves, new opportunities present themselves. With Skype, we saw a way to bring a new dimension, online voice communications, to online commerce. We believe the combination of eBay, Skype and our payment service PayPal will enable us to create an unparalleled e-commerce and communications engine for buyers and sellers around the world”

Meg Whitman in your inbox
Donna Bogatin, June 2 2006

• ““This is the first time that eBay has used e-mail to urge its members to weigh in on a national issue and the first time Whitman has sent an e-mail to members under her own name.”
• “Whitman’s e-mail campaign aims to influence the Net neutrality debate, as she describes in her e-mail. The copy of the Whitman e-mail below was posted at an Internet forum“

eBay’s China Syndrome
Om Malik, June 24 2006

• “EBay customers are upset over San Jose, Calif.-based auction giant’s decision to stop charging users in China transaction fees, mostly because of intensified competition from Taobao (Alibaba) and Tencent, at a time when they are being hit by price hikes as high as 400%.”
• “These price hikes range from 2%-to-3% increase in the “final value” of the items sold through stores. The insertion fees have been increased sharply by the company as well. The listing fees for items below $25 will be up 150% and over 400% for items that are priced $25 or higher”
• “Those familiar with ebay say that company is using price increases to keep its revenue growth intact.”

EBay to boost shares with buyback
BBC News, July 19 2006

• “Ebay shares, which rose 5% on the news, have shed 41% of their value this year amid stiff competition.”
• “The firm is also planning on raising the fees retailers operating on its site pay, to counter slower growth.”
• “While stocks were boosted by the news of the $2bn buy-back plan scheme the figure is tiny when seen in the light of the $40bn that has been wiped off the value of eBay’s shares in the past 18 months.”
• “The decision to increase rates is another way to bolster the firm’s health.”
• “”Whenever we do a fee increase our community does not like it but I think they will understand the reasons we are doing this,” said Ms Whitman.”

eBay’s Meg Whitman on Pricing Changes and Power Sellers
Seeking Alpha, August 01 2006

• [Heath Terry] “I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you are seeing right now in the breakdown of store formats, in terms of those that are going to be impacted by the increase in final value fees?”
• [Meg Whitman] “it’s too early to tell because we just announced the price changes to the SIF format today and they won’t go into effect for 30 days. So I can’t really give you any indication of what we are going to see.”
• “Our user community is not usually enthusiastic about price increases and I understand that. But I think the majority of our Power Sellers who sell in core will understand what we are doing to rebalance the Marketplace.”
• “eBay hopes that by raising fees and reducing store inventories, it will become easier for buyers to find what they are looking for.  ”Whenever we do a fee increase, our community doesn’t like it, but I think they will understand the reasons why we are doing this,” Whitman said.”"

eBay’s new fees incites fury
Jessica Seid, August 23 2006

• “As of Tuesday, the online auctioneer boosted the fees it charges to those who sell items through its online stores”
• “By raising the costs to operate stores, eBay hopes to push more listings back into the auction format, CEO Meg Whitman said in an interview last week.  ”We are trying to get back to the essence of eBay,” Whitman said.”
• “”The desired effect is to incite sellers to use the core part of the site more often,” said Hanni Durzy, a spokesman for eBay.  ”Nobody likes a fee increase, but it’s our responsibility to make sure that we’re creating the best experience overall,” Durzy said.”"

Why Ebay will die
Dean Pullen, August 31 2006

• “Ebay recently hiked up charges for the half a million online stores that operate on the site, which provoked the merchants most affected to call for the head of Ebay’s CEO, Meg Whitman.”
• “Marginal rises are often acceptable, but Ebay’s price changes are often in double percentage terms, if not triple – 100% rises are not uncommon.”
• “A number of industry commentators and analysts argued that Ebay didn’t need to buy into its own VoIP service, and that an over abundance of cash had merely been burning Ebay’s pocket waiting for a weakly technically linked company to become available for purchase.”

Meg Whitman
October 9 2005

• “dansedanse // <![CDATA[
  document.write('(425');
  // ]]>(425(425)) Sep 1, 2006 9:36 AM     My first impression of Meg, was her genuineness, it isn’t often to find strong leadership, intelligence and greatness in one person who has such warmth. I’m sure she would be a great interview if you can arrange it.  There are so many elements to admire in her leadership of eBay it would be nice if someone could separate the woman from the job and capture her as a person (who has done an excellent job), not just the eBay CEO.     Joyceb/danse”

eBay gets sued by Louis Vuitton
Brian White, September 20 2006

• “another example of eBay being called out for not policing its auction site for counterfeit goods trafficking”
• Comments

eBay: Down But Not Out
Frank Fortunado, September 25 2006

• “With eBay’s stock price down over 50 percent in the last 20 months, with fees and seller defections rising and sell-through rates and prices realized down, with a perceived company arrogance and indifference to user problems, an increasingly heard call from eBay sellers is, “Bring us the head of Meg Whitman” and the rest of top management.”
• “eBay’s flip-flop on Stores, seems to have riled everyone. In February, 2006 the company made Stores searchable as a means to give the fixed-price venue more exposure, to the consternation of auction sellers who felt the pinch of added competition. By July, eBay realized the move had backfired and backtracked, announcing an increase in Store fees by a hefty 25 to50 percent for most sellers, that began Aug. 22.”
• “”The marketplace has been overwhelmed with identical, poorly-priced items that have diluted the magic of the eBay experience,” Meg Whitman commented regarding the increase, stating further that “the rebalancing of the marketplace” was designed to drive Store sellers back into the auction format. The results have been mixed for eBay, as some Store owners moved on to different venues and/or developed their own Web sites.”
• “Whitman has said in U.S. News and World Report, “Sometimes your are delighted, sometimes you are surprised, sometimes you are horrified…what’s the worst thing that can happen? You fail.”"

And the EBay Hits Just Keep Coming
Randy Smythe, October 4 2006

• “Wow! What can eBay be thinking? The reported motivation for the Stores fee increase was, and I once again refer to Meg Whitman’s quote, “The marketplace has been overwhelmed with identical, poorly-priced items that have diluted the magic of the eBay experience.”“
• “Note to EBay investors: If you are reading these posts, the mistakes are mounting and the results of quick fixes are often worse than the original mistakes. With mounting problem with Store Owners, competition from Google, problems in the Asian markets and Skype how sure are you that these fixes aren’t going to sink this ship? Would you bet your house on it? Some current eBay sellers may lose theirs.”

Building eBay 2.0
Adam Lashinsky, October 5 2006

• “Whitman’s hardly soaking up the glory these days. Investors have pummeled her stock, slicing it in half since its December 2004 high of $59. They’re on her case over a host of issues.”
• “”In the early days, even when we’d screw up, it worked anyway,” recalls Gil Penchina, a longtime eBay executive”

On The Record: Meg Whitman
San Francisco Chronicle, November 19 2006

• [Meg Whitman] “”First was we started off the year very strongly and then we made, if you will, a merchandising mistake on eBay.com. We integrated the store inventory format listings into the core eBay marketplace.”  ”There is the law of unintended consequences. We degraded the buyer experience in a way that we did not anticipate. It took us a few months to diagnose the problem, determine what the right fix was and to put the fix into place.”"
• [Meg Whitman] “”I buy. Almost no matter what I’m looking for, I check eBay first. It can be sporting goods equipment for my boys (Whitman has two children in college), it can be home decor, it can be sporting equipment for ourselves.”  ”I just bought two flat-panel TVs on eBay. What I sell are things that the kids have outgrown and things we no longer need in the house.”  ”I’m a casual seller. But there are times I put up 10 or 15 items on a weekend.”"
• [Meg Whitman] “”I was asked to come out and interview for eBay. I was very happy running Mr. Potato Head and Barney and Teletubby (as a Hasbro executive).”"

:::

Got links?

We’re not finished. We want links. Post a comment with links.

NEG Meg The Series 2007

Welcome to the www.NegMeg.com NEG Meg The Series episode archive.

“a monkey could drive this train”

Margaret “Meg” Whitman comment on eBay,
while she was eBay CEO and President.

Margaret Cushing “Meg” Whitman
Born August 4 1956

• “President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008.”

eBay Hacked, Cracked  & Hijacked, But Denies All
February 19 2007

• “came just weeks after North American CEO Bill Cobb announced new fraud fighting measures and policy changes to the site”
• Comments

Stirring Up the Cubicles at eBay
Brad Stone, February 21 2007

• “Mr. Donahoe, 46, is a deputy to eBay’s chief executive, Meg Whitman, 50, and, many people in the industry say, her likely successor when she ultimately steps down.”
• ““All our businesses need to do well, but John’s success and the success of Marketplaces is absolutely essential to the company,” said Ms. Whitman, who met Mr. Donahoe when they were consultants working in the San Francisco office of Bain & Company in the early 1980s.”
• “eBay stock has dropped by half from an early 2005 high”

Is Vladuz the Good Guy?
February 26 2007

• “Now two weeks into the latest bombardment of Vladuz related listings, management is looking like an impotent cowboy with a black hat”
• Comments

The Vladuz Style of eBay Auction Hacking Continues!
March 18 2007

eBay Getting into Micro-Finance through Purchase of MicroPlace
Ina Steiner, March 30 2007

• “eBay has purchased an organization called MicroPlace”
• “eBay’s Chief Marketing Officer Gary Briggs” “A third point to bring up is MicroPlace, which a group that we purchased that is making microfinance loans available to the developing world in particular, and we think – particularly as it relates to PayPal”

Antitrust Lawsuit Filed against eBay over PayPal, Payments Policies
Ina Steiner, April 6 2007

• “Michael Malone filed an antitrust class-action lawsuit against eBay this week under the Sherman Act, alleging eBay “utilizes its nationwide monopoly of the on-line auction market to monopolize the available forms of payment that sellers can use on eBay.” eBay controls which payment methods sellers may advertise in their listings”

eBay’s Payment Policies Spark Two Antitrust Lawsuits
Ina Steiner, May 4 2007

• “Two antitrust lawsuits were filed against eBay in April 2007 and have been assigned to the same judge because they are related, according to court filings. The plaintiffs in both parties have complained of eBay’s practices with regard to its online payment service PayPal. The same judge had presided over a PayPal-related class-action lawsuit that was filed in 2002.”
• “The Justice Department gave the green light to eBay’s acquisition of PayPal in 2002, despite the fact that PayPal itself had complained to the government about eBay’s practices after the auction marketplace had acquired the BillPoint payment service. ”
• “Both antitrust lawsuits are assigned to Judge Fogel in the US District Court, Northern District of California.”
• “The Court finds that Malone v. eBay Inc., Case No. 07-01882-JF and Farmer, et al. v. Ebay, Inc., Case No. C-07-02209 are related actions and such cases are hereby consolidated into Malone v. eBay Inc., Case No. 07-01882-JF, and are referred to herein as the Consolidated Action.”

Meg Whitman at TiEcon
TiEcon, May 17 2007

• [Meg Whitman] “We also think about very disruptive ideas that could disrupt our core business, or we could disrupt other major segments of the economy. And many times those very disruptive innovations will come from outside eBay”
• [Meg Whitman] “We have no sales force.”
• [Meg Whitman] “Failure is okay.”

EBay reshapes itself as an easier, cooler place
June 15 2007

• ““Our user experience has always been fantastic, but it didn’t keep up, in my view, as well as it should have,” CEO Meg Whitman said in an interview Friday on the sidelines of the “eBay Live”user celebration in Boston. You will see more changes to eBay’s buyer experience in the next 12 months than you probably have seen in the past three or four years.”"
• “Other moves make eBay more like typical e-commerce sites, such as last year’s birth of eBay Express”
• “eBay’s 2005 purchase of Skype, an Internet calling service, for $4.1 billion”
• “”reignite the core,” in the words of Bill Cobb”

EBay Moves to Recharge Its Auctions
Bob Tedeschi, June 18 2007

• “In 1998, eBay’s chief executive, Meg Whitman, changed the background color of the site’s home page from gray to white. Rather than simply switching colors overnight, though, Ms. Whitman directed eBay’s engineers to bleach the gray over the course of 30 days. At the end of the month, the company asked users if they noticed anything different. No one did.”
• “700,000 sellers who rely on eBay for their livelihoods”
• ““We have to make sure our old users stay with us, but we’re going to be more bold around product changes than we’ve been in the past,” Ms. Whitman said in an interview last week in Boston at eBay Live, an annual conference for the site’s sellers. “I think people expect more from eBay.””
• “Analysts said sellers were moving to other places on the Web in search of buyers who had grown weary of an overwhelming array of product choices on eBay.”
• [Meg Whitman] “We’re optimistic that the changes will translate to accelerated growth and help us change the trajectory of our two largest markets, U.S. and Germany”

Reaping profit in study, sweat
Robert Gavin and Sacha Pfeiffer, June 26 2007

• “Maximizing the financial return to investors can mean slashing jobs, closing plants, and moving production overseas. While Bain Capital helped expand companies that created jobs, the firm also engaged in some of the business’s harsher practices.”
• “Companies like Bain Capital typically cash out of their investments in three to five years, and ”usually have less of a stake in the community, in terms of employment, service on nonprofit boards, your physical and environmental impact,” {Ross} Gittell says. ”The objective is: make money for investors. It’s not to maximize jobs.””
• “Through Ampad, Bain bought several other office supply makers, borrowing heavily each time. By 1999, Ampad’s debt reached nearly $400 million, up from $11 million in 1993, according to government filings.”
• “Bain Capital didn’t escape Ampad’s eventual bankruptcy unscathed. It held about one-third of Ampad’s shares, which became worthless. But while as many as 185 workers near Buffalo lost jobs in a 1999 plant closing, Bain Capital and its investors ultimately made more than $100 million on the deal.”

EBay Chief Spurs Growth on PayPal, Beats Google Unit (Update2)
Danny King, July 6 2007

• “PayPal, bought by EBay for $1.5 billion in 2002″
• “”PayPal is a huge home run,” Whitman, EBay’s chief executive officer”
• “Shares of EBay rose $1.12, or 3.5 percent, to $33.39″

EBay Profit is Up 50%; Listings Off
Brad Stone, July 19 2007

• “Ms. Whitman said that her efforts to improve the user’s experience should address these problems.  “In the next six months,”she said, “you will see more changes to eBay than you have in the last two or three years, whether that is an improved search experience or fun things that make the site better, like Bid Assistant, which allows you to bid on more than one item without worrying that you will end up buying five iPods by mistake.”"
• “EBay started Kijiji overseas in 2005.  “We’ve had a great relationship with Craigslist, and we have learned a lot from them,” Ms. Whitman said. “We felt this market was large and diverse enough to support many players. We don’t think of new offerings as competitive, we think of them as better and more choices for consumers. We think there is an opportunity to stake out a slightly different buyer.”"

Blasphemy at eBay
Adam Lashinsky, July 23 2007

• “Last month, eBay temporarily stopped buying keyword advertising on Google, the Web’s largest search engine. EBay said the suspension did not have had significant effect on its bottom line. “We learned a great deal from that test, “Ms. Whitman said. “It actually had no impact on the financials of the quarter, and we learned a lot about where we want to spend money and where we think we can save money on Internet marketing.”"
• Comments

Mitt’s equity army
David S. Bernstein, August 10 2007

• “One such example is Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay — and one of the Romney campaign’s national finance chairs. Whitman worked with Romney at Bain & Company before going to work for Disney and then Keds. In 1995, when Bain Capital bought florist chain FTD, Romney installed Whitman as CEO. She left after just 18 months, with stocks, salary, and bonuses worth well more than a million dollars —even though, as she has conceded in interviews, she did not come close to successfully putting the company on the right track.”
• “Bain Capital’s record shows the same treatment for many companies: slashing jobs, benefits, research-and-development budgets, and other items to show quick profitability before selling or taking the company’s stock public.”

Romney’s Old Ties To Firm Pay Off
John Solomon and Matthew Mosk, August 14 2007

• “Another fundraiser is eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, who worked as a vice president at Bain before getting top jobs at Stride Rite shoes and the FTD florist service, which Bain targeted for investment.”

The Ruination of eBay
crazeenydriver, September 22 2007

ebaY Major Hack Attack! User’s Data Posted On Ebay T&S
Cappynonymous, September 25 2007

• Comments

Intimidating eBay Lawyer snoyce@ebay.com ME Page Hacked By Vladuz
Doc, September 28 2007 (?)

• “Now In An Apparent Show Of Power That He Can Pick And Hack Anyone’s eBay Account He Chooses, Vladuz Posts Mr Noyce’s Personal Details On His ME Page!”
• “This Really Makes Rob Chestnut’s Trust And Safety Department Look Like A Bunch Of Keystone Cops! But It Has Been Rumored Rob Is On Sabbatical, And Will Not Be Returning To eBay!”

Web 2.0 Summit: Meg Whitman, eBay
Bobbie Johnson, October 18 2007

• [Meg Whitman] “”If we were a retailer – which we’re not – we’d be the fifth or sixth largest in the world. But as your core business begins to slow down, you go right back to where you started, which is customers. how do you reinvent your core business to meet the needs of customers. We’re actually in a reinvention of some of the core flows, . We have made more changes to the site in the last three or six months than we have in the last three years.”"
• [Meg Whitman] “”We have about 1.6m people worldwide who make their living selling on eBay. There are always people who made their business. The casual sellers represent about 50% of the gross merchandise volume and about 95% of the sellers. We look at the number of users we have, which has slowed but it’s still going up.”"
• [Meg Whitman] “”We began to see PayPal becoming the effective way to pay on eBay. It’s now 85-90% of payments.”"
• [Meg Whitman] “”We know that we were only here because of a disruptive innovation.”"
• [Meg Whitman] “”The vast majority of people – less than 1/100th of one percent cause problems.”"
• [Meg Whitman] “”Etsy.com? “It’s a cute little company, I like what they’ve done. We need to do everything we can to invite those sellers onto eBay – we just launched eBay Neighbourhoods”"

EBAY Launches MicroPlace.com
ONLY EBAY, October 24 2007

• “After acquiring the company in June 2006, EBAY have launched MicroPlace”
• “Meg Whitman was talking about entering the social lending business as far back as this speach in June 2006.”

Whois Vladuz eBay’s Hacker
liamssoft, October 25 2007

• “Sources in the hacking community say that he claims to be listening in on some meetings held by eBay chief executive Meg Whitman.”
• “2004, someone calling themselves Vladuz was selling a set of PHP files designed to create phishing sites that would collect eBay data”
• “observers think the hacks Vladuz has pulled off reveal a much deeper problem at the auction giant”

eBay jumps into microfinancing
Yi-Wyn Yet, October 26 2007

• “The site, which had been in development when eBay (EBAY) acquired MicroPlace in June 2006″
• “EBay’s interest in microfinance was established by company founder Pierre Omidyar.”
• “eBay executive Matt Bannick, who spearheaded the purchase of MicroPlace, left the company in March to run Omidyar Network”

eBay Launches Microfinance Loan Site
October 29 2007

• “EBay’s newly launched MicroPlace lets users make loans through PayPal”

The Dangerous Wealth of the Ivy League
Business Week, November 29 2007

• “It’s only fitting that Whitman College, Princeton’s new student residence, is named for eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman, because it’s a billionaire’s mansion in the form of a dorm. After Whitman (Class of ‘77) pledged $30 million, administrators tore up their budget and gave architect Demetri Porphyrios virtual carte blanche. Each student room has triple-glazed mahogany casement windows made of leaded glass. The dining hall boasts a 35-foot ceiling gabled in oak and a “state of the art servery.” By the time the 10-building complex in the Collegiate Gothic style opened in August, it had cost Princeton $136 million, or $272,000 for each of the 500 undergraduates who will live there. ”

EBAY: Time For CEO Meg Whitman to Go?
Henry Blodget, December 6 2007

• “We will not be the first to suggest that Meg may have gotten a bit more credit than she deserved for that”
• “I go out there and meet with Meg and it’s all I can do to avoid shorting it as I walk out the door.”

Should eBay CEO Meg Whitman Step Down?
Ina Steiner, December 6 2007

• “Whitman did some things badly. Giving users inadequate customer service was one. And denial of fraud was another.”
• Comments

Yes, Amazon SHOULD Buy eBay
Henry Blodget, December 17 2007

• “eBay’s mismanagement and lack of attention to its user interface have finally caught up to it, punishing its market value.”
• “until eBay’s CEO situation is resolved, the concept is probably moot. (There is no way the companies will merge with Meg still at the helm, as her immediate departure thereafter would leave no interpretation possible other than that she had been unceremoniously dumped).”

The Depth of eBay’s Problems 1: Disappointed Buyers
Saul Hansell, December 17 2007

• “The outpouring of rage at eBay was of the sort we don’t see here for anything other than cellphone companies. The company is clearly getting hit by both buyers and sellers.”
• “As a former middle manager at eBay, I can attest to the company’s ghastly approach to customer support…. If it’s a matter of managing expectations, then eBay should rename their customer support something more appropriate like, “Endless obstacle course of red tape and runaround where you rarely if ever get to talk to a human.” — Ann Cummins”

The Depth of eBay’s Problems 2: Angry Sellers
Saul Hansell, December 17 2007

• ““EBay’s relations with sellers over the last few years have deteriorated and are, at best, poor right now,” Mr.  Wingo said. ”
• “Given the depth of the anger against the company”

eBay Users Vent Rage To NYT
Henry Blodget, December 17 2007

• “eBay, meanwhile, now seems to have alienated not only Wall Street but the folks who create all of its business value.”
• “Meanwhile, as frustrated eBay shareholders, we reiterate our suggestion that it’s time for Meg Whitman to go.”

Face Time With Meg Whitman
Charles Fishman, December 19 2007

• “Husband, Griffith Harsh, a neurosurgeon at Stanford; two sons, ages 13 and 16″
• [Meg Whitman] “(laughing) I took calculus, chemistry, and physics my first year. I survived. But I didn’t enjoy it. Of course, chemistry, calculus, and physics have nothing to do with being a doctor, but if you’re 17 years old, you think, This is what being a doctor is going to be about. After that, I had to find something else to do. I began selling advertising for a magazine that was published by Princeton undergrads. It was more fun than physics.”
• [Meg Whitman] “I bought Beanie Babies when one of my sons was very much into Beanie Babies. And I sold children’s books that we didn’t need anymore. It was great. Here was a book that you didn’t need, and you might get $6 or $8 for it. Next, we bought Pokémon cards. Then we sold Pokémon cards. Sort of the round-trip on Pokémon cards. And the latest thing I’ve been buying on the site has been a lot of fly-fishing equipment.”
• “How does the slowdown in the U.S. economy affect eBay?”  [Meg Whitman] “Our hypothesis is that in a slowdown, eBay actually benefits. And that’s because buyers still want the things that they want. Consumer electronics, computers, whatever. Yet people will become more value-oriented. At the same time, I think that we will actually see an increase in sellers. You may get gifts that you don’t necessarily want, things you don’t use anymore — things that you can sell on eBay and raise some cash.”

:::

Got links?

We’re not finished. We want links. Post a comment with links.

NEG Meg The Series 2008

Welcome to the www.NegMeg.com NEG Meg The Series episode archive.

“a monkey could drive this train”

Margaret “Meg” Whitman comment on eBay,
while she was eBay CEO and President.

Margaret Cushing “Meg” Whitman
Born August 4 1956

• “President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008.”

Should eBay’s Meg Whitman resign?
Kim Peterson, January 3 2008

• “is it time for Whitman to step down? If you’re an eBay shareholder, you might think so. The stock was abysmal in 2006 and continued to disappointment in 2007, staying mostly in the $30-$35 range”
• “EBay has some serious problems, including an increasingly angry user base.”
• Comments

EBay chief bids to regain momentum
Jonathan Richards, January 3 2008

• “however, an increasingly vocal chorus of detractors say that the Skype fiasco has raised doubts over Ms Whitman’s judgment”
• “Deutsche Bank reinterating their “sell” call on eBay”
• Comments

ebay Meg Whitman Resigns- She Took the Money and Ran
cappnonymous, January 4 2008

• Comments

PayPal Freezes New Hampshire Recount Funds
Paul Joseph Watson, January 16 2008

• “The Granny Warriors had raised the necessary $55,600 deposit for the recount but at the last minute before it was transferred to the New Hampshire Secretary of State, Paypal blocked access to the funds.
  No explanation has been forthcoming from Paypal as to why the corporation froze the account.”

Ebay’s Meg Whitman to Step Down After a Decade as CEO
Erick Schonfeld, January 21 2008

• “During the last two years, eBay has lost about half its value. Not a great note to leave on.”
• Comments

eBay falls on weak forecast, CEO Meg Whitman steps down
Michael Fowikes, January 23 2008

• “eBay users over the past few years have definitely had a love/hate relationship with Whitman, and it will be interesting to see just how well liked her successor finds himself.”
• “Don’t be surprised to see fees coming down once Donahoe takes control.”
• Comments

House cleaning at eBay: Meg Whitman and Bill Cobb to pursue other interests
Jaunary 23 2008

• “Whitman’s downfall was presumably brought about by several failed acquisitions, the one of Skype being the most spectacular one, and weak earnings. On the business side of things, eBay has struggled with seller attrition and stagnating listings volume, mostly because of steadily increasing fees.”
• Comments

EBay’s Meg Whitman Out; John Donahoe Named CEO & Prez
Betsy Schiffman, January 23 2008

• “”John Donahoe’s a phenomenal executive, just like Meg Whitman was,” says Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst Scott Devitt.”
• “The news comes after a tumultuous year for eBay, whose core auction business experienced two quarters of sequential declines in listings.”
• Comments

Longtime Ebay chief steps down
Richard Waters, January 23 2008

• “However, her last two years have been clouded by high-profile slip-ups, including the purchase of internet telephone service Skype, which has failed to boost Ebay’s wider e-commerce business, a botched move into China, as well as an accelerating slowdown in Ebay’s central auction business.”

Meg Whitman Steps Down And Things Look Bad at eBay
January 24 2008

• “I think that eBay is getting a reputation as being a haven for those who wish to commit fraud.”

What Kind of Leadership Does eBay Need?
Michael Maccoby, January 25 2008

• “eBay has stalled. Rivals are taking market share, eBay is not attracting new users, and it has not been fully successful in combating widespread fraud. Now Whitman is moving to the board and handing the top management job to John Donahoe, former managing director of Bain consulting, who for the last three years has been president of eBay’s marketing division”

eBay On Its Way to $10?$
Andrew Horowitz, January 28 2008

• “CEO Meg Whitman will also step down, making room for new ideas that may help to stop the ongoing share decline. If you were one of the unlucky ones who bought the stock in January 2004, you could be sitting on a whopping 54% loss”
• ““Consumers are clearly being more conservative,” Whitman said in a joint interview with Donahoe on cable TV channel CNBC. “I anticipate we will see an increase in casual sellers who are supplementing their income. “eBay at least partly benefited during the economic downturn of 2001-2002, allowing people who had lost their jobs to start businesses on eBay, Whitman told Reuters. Some 1.3 million people now derive at least part of their livelihood on eBay.”"

The World’s Billionaires
Luisa Kroll, March 5 2008

• “#897 Margaret Whitman”
• “Sold Ebay shares for the first time since 2003 last year.”

John McCain & Meg Whitman on H-1B Visas
Mahalo.com, March 25 2008

• “An Exclusive Interview with Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain and eBay CEO Meg Whitman on the topic of H1-B Visas. Currently, a maximum of only 65,000 H-1B Visas are granted every year. Today in Santa Ana, we asked whether this limit should be raised. “

Life After eBay: An Interview With Meg Whtiman
Kevin Maney, Amy Wallace, April 22 2008

• [Meg Whitman] “There is quite a personal relationship between the CEO and the users at a company like eBay. You have to remember, many of our users make their living on eBay. They have connected with people who share the same interests. When you talk to some of our top users, they will tell you that their relationship with eBay is more than a business relationship. You could argue we were the first social network. But eBay is community anchored in commerce. It’s not just community for community’s sake.”
• [Meg Whitman] “The site outage in June of 1999. I was not a technologist, so I had just really begun to learn the underlying technology that powered eBay. And so when the site crashed – it was down for 22 hours, then it came back up for eight, then down for eight. The darkest hour was when the engineer said to me, “I’m not sure we can bring this back up.” Because we had corrupted the entire backend data base. That was not perfect. (Laughs.) And there was nothing I could do other than be a cheerleader and a coach to the technology team.”

My eBay Job, Do 1.3 million people really earn a living on the site?
Daniel Gross, May 22 2008

• “Certain numbers have an iconic status in America’s business culture. One of them is the number of people who derive income selling goods on eBay: 1.3 million. The figure has been cited by eBay executives such as former CEO Meg Whitman, speaking on 60 Minutes in March”
• “The notion that 630,000 Americans—a number roughly equal to the population of North Dakota–are making something approaching a living wage selling on eBay is a little rich.”

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman Still Politicking
Ina Steiner, May 28 2008

• Comments

eBay Live and Let Die
Rick Aristotle Munarriz, June 19 2008

• “Mainstream media is hoisting the battering ram, too. When BusinessWeek rolls with an “Auctions on eBay: A Dying Breed” headline, you have to think that maybe the company has upset one power seller too many.”
• “eBay will have to deal eventually with the irate mob that has better things to do than show up and vent in the cavernous McCormick hall this week. Maybe it’s the silence that should worry the company; at least a vocally displeased seller is better than an apathetic one.”
• “Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is a satisfied eBay user with 173 positive feedbacks to show for it.”
• Comments

Meg Whitman v. Meg Whitman
bhglitter, July 7 2008

• “In two interviews given on the same day, senior McCain economic adviser Meg Whitman contradicts herself in terms of tax cuts needing to be offset by spending cuts. In the first interview, on ABC’s Good Morning America, Whitman defends McCain’s vote against the Bush tax cuts by saying they weren’t accompanied by spending cuts. But in another interview with Steve Forbes on CNBC, Whitman said that McCain’s own tax cuts are not “contigent on controlling spending.” “
• Comments

McCain Touts eBay’s Whitman as Treasury Secretary During Debate
Ina Steiner, October 7 2008

• “1.3 million people in America make their living on eBay.” (For those of you who might be joining this post from outside the eBay world, that’s known as “eBay math.”"
• “Whitman served on the Board of Directors at Goldman Sachs when Paulson headed the firm. When Meg was forced to step down from the Board due to a conflict-of-interest scandal involving “spinning,” Paulson praised her (2002)”
• Comments

Charlie Rose – Meg Whitman
October 20 2008

• “A conversation about leadershp at the Harvard Business School centennial celebration”

Meg Whitman loses bid for governor domain names
November 12 2008

• “Meg Whitman never traded under her name in relation to any goods and services”

eBay was great to work for until around 2004
December 2 2008

• “When eBay missed Wall Street goals for the first time, regular employees did not get a bonus, but the CEO (Meg Whitman at the time) received a one million dollar bonus.”
• “Management has lost sight of what really matters – eBay users.”

Why eBay’s star CEO isn’t famous enough for politics
Owen Thomas, December 10 2008

• “Whitman’s legal team has spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to get them back. But an arbitrator at the World Intellectual Property Organization, which rules on such matters, has denied her complaint.”
• “Whitman, the ruling argues, hasn’t established herself as a brand in the marketplace”
• “why is Whitman so concerned about reclaiming these domains, when she’s not even offically running for governor? “What can I say?” said Gomez. “We’re retired. We’re bored.”"

Meg Whitman
Owen Thomas, December 12 2008

• “As a practical matter, Whitman’s support of Proposition 8 may backfire in fundraising and in the general election. Several current and former eBay executives, including founder Pierre Omidyar, lent their name to a newspaper advertisement opposing Proposition 8. Will they support Whitman’s campaign now?”
• “Whitman’s quixotic legal campaign to reclaim a set of domain names she failed to register before talk of her gubernatorial prospects became public. The sight of a tech billionaire harassing the small businessman who registered them are provoking giggles among California’s Republicans.”

Tech Loser #10 Meg Whitman
Rachel King, December 15 2008

• LOSS: $504 million
• eBay’s shares are down from $35 a year ago to just $14 now.

:::

Got links?

We’re not finished. We want links. Post a comment with links.