Online auction giant eBay celebrates 20th anniversary

The online auction site eBay celebrates its twentieth anniversary this month. The firm, which was intially set up as a hobby by a software programmer who wanted to sell a broken laser pointer pen, has created around 2,000 eBay millionaires in the UK alone in that time.

People use eBay to buy and sell things. Those wanting to buy the goods can compete with other potential purchasers by bidding their own prices for the goods until a deadline passes.

eBay's headquarters are in the USA. Such has been the success of the model that some people even make a living from it. The company has around 25 million sellers and 157 million buyers worldwide. It has a stock market value of more than 32 billion US dollars (£21 billion).

The University of Kent academic and business forecaster, Professor Richard Scase, says that eBay has transformed business and retailing.

eBay first came to Britain in 1999. The site attracts 18 million visitors every month. There are more than 200,000 businesses trading through eBay, some of them in the South and South East. Six years ago there were just 123,000 UK businesses on the site.

The firm has an app for mobile phone users, and says it is planning to improve its international services for sellers across the world.