Technology, Ebay | featured news

Discover makes headway in bringing eBay's online-payments service to physical retailers, but First Data, one of the country's largest merchant processors, has opted not to support the service.

In February, Google ran a contest for Glass offering "winners" the opportunity to be "Glass Explorers," i.e. the guinea pigs who will test out Glass in the wild. Downside: Explorers have to pay $1,500 for the product and for the privilege of being called "Glassholes." Upside: They get to test out a brand new product before anyone else. One 26-year-old Explorer came up with an even better upside: he planned to auction off his pair of Glass on eBay to pay down his student loans.

EBay is scrapping its complex, tiered set of "final value fees," calculated as a percentage of an item's sale price, and introducing flat-rate fees based on product categories.

EBay Inc reported holiday quarter results that just beat Wall Street expectations, but the e-commerce company also gave a cautious forecast for 2013. EBay shares climbed 1.7 percent to $53.80 in after-hours trading following the announcement. Expectations were high ahead of the results because sales data from outside sources suggested strong sales growth from eBay's online marketplace and a solid increase in transactions processed by the company's PayPal payments business.

...Even if America’s iconic lard-log is dying, however, its entrepreneurial spirit is very much alive. Which is evidenced by the market for Twinkies and Twinkie-related products that is currently emerging on eBay. According to prices set by the sellers on the auction site, if you want a piece of air-puffed, sugar-soaked, corn-fed American history … it is going to cost you.

Michael Rubin is lucky. And he’s also damned good. Lucky, because eBay approached him last year with a $2.4 billion offer to buy his moneylosing GSI Commerce–which provides Web design, customer service and shipping to big-brand retailers–a 51% premium over the share price. Damned, because Rubin has always played so loose and fast that he’s nearly brought on his own ruin–and stoked the wrath of shareholders. Good, because he has an uncanny eye for undervalued assets and a lifelong talent for turning them into gold.

Dateline: Dungeon and Dragons — if you're looking for a spell to aid you on your next adventure, traveler, then you're sorely out of luck. The great and powerful internet auction house eBay has henceforth banned all sales of wizardly enchantments and magic spells, even if you have a vacuum cleaner's worth of gold to offer.

EBay's first-quarter net income grew 20 percent thanks to higher revenue from its PayPal business and brisk sales at its e-commerce websites. The results beat Wall Street's expectations and investors sent the company's stock higher in after-hours trading.

Yahoo Inc. has named Scott Thompson, president of eBay Inc.'s PayPal division, as its new CEO, the fourth one in less than five years for the struggling Internet company.

Hewlett-Packard Co is on the verge of naming former eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman its new CEO, replacing Leo Apotheker at the helm of the largest U.S. technology company, two sources told Reuters on Thursday.