A long list of senior management changes has been announced today at eBay and its properties PayPal and Skype. The market for all but its services except online auctions has changed so much recently it will be interesting to see what policy and services changes follow.
PayPal President Jeff Jordan will be replaced by eBay’s former CFO and head of strategy and now Skype President Rajiv Dutta. Skype’s VP of Products Alex Kazim will take Dutta’s place as President of Skype. Henry Gomez, currently General Manager of Skype North America, will take on a new position of Chief Marketing Officer and Director of Country Operations Worldwide for Skype. Lorrie Norrington, formerly President and CEO of eBay owned Shopping.com is now President of eBay International. Matt Bannick leaves that position to lead eBay’s corporate philanthropy and developing world work.
To summarize:
1. PayPal President replaced by Skype President/former eBay CFO+strategy.
2. Skype VP of Products now President of Skype.
3. Skype North America GM becomes Chief Marketing Officer for Skype Worldwide.
4. Shopping.com head becomes eBay international President, last President takes over philanthropy.
Meanwhile…eBay banned Google Purchases for payments on auctions today. This spring eBay banned third party reputation system RapLeaf. The much anticipated Skype integration into eBay just a few weeks ago turned out to be very unexciting. Is an an increasinlgy walled garden the future of eBay/PayPal and Skype? eBay stocks took a dive today on the announcement; such a strategy could really backfire.
There appears to be little analysis of any of this yet from the various Skype and eBay communities online. Is the former strategist of acquisition-monster eBay taking over PayPal to get aggressive now that Google is in the payment game? Is the VP of Products at Skype taking over Skype because new products are what Skype has really done right? Is the Google search/adsense/purchases powerhouse such a threat that eBay’s auctions/payments/VOIP strategizing needs a major upgrade? When (if) Google announces a Google OS will we see shifts like this at Microsoft? Oh, questions abound.
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Musical Chairs
tournament of giants have just started…
Interesting. Confusing.
- 1. PayPal President replaced by Skype President/former eBay CFO+strategy.
2. Skype VP of Products now President of Skype.
3. Skype North America GM becomes Chief Marketing Officer for Skype Worldwide.
4. Shopping.com head becomes eBay international President, last President takes over philanthropy. -
5. and the beat goes on
It will be oh so interesting if anyone can put a dent in Ebay’s monopoly:)
According to AuctionBytes (through Valleywag), eBay has banned sellers from requesting payment via Google Checkout. Gotta use those network effects while you still have them… http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m07/i06/s02
Where is Jeff Jordan going?
This is all very interesting.. gotta keep an eye on this for sure. Interesting in part because of all of subjects I see out there, this one I am pretty sure hits home to nearly everyone that has a computer at home (online).
Short term I do not see this as being a big threat to eBay/PayPal. Only in the long-term do I think that is the case, but in thinking along those lines the way I think the payments will be a risk is when Google figures out Froogle and makes Base much more than a spam den and finds a way to integrate my purchasing habbits into which ads I am shown.
This is all very interesting.. gotta keep an eye on this for sure. Interesting in part because of all of subjects I see on here and other places like Digg and mashable!, this one I am pretty sure hits home to nearly everyone that has a computer at home (online), including the casual users!
Hello all you sanji’s out there!
A Google O/S? Let’s hope not.
I don’t trust all this online shopping huggermugger. Back in my day, all a man needed to kick some ass was a few divisions of good men, some tanks and trucks, and a couple thousand artillery pieces.
Nowdays it’s all social network this and AJAX that. A few get rich, and the rest are looking at paper-thin profit margins. I’ll take a nice reliable Katyusha over all this newfangled faddishness.
“A Google O/S? Let’s hope not.”
It would be an attempt at the impossible. Google makes so many product these days that i’ve given up following it. A new Google product just doesn’t have the ring like it does before.
I wonder why the guys at eBay are so nervous. They banned Google checkout when it just came out, are they really that scared of Google? After all who isn’t? But then again, what have Google done to any competitors outside the search/advertising market?
Gmail? great! But still not as popular as Yahoo mail or Hotmail.
Gtalk? let’s not get into it..
An interesting merry-go-round of changes. Of all the news though, I’m least impressed with the eBay choice to not allow Google payments. What a shame. It will end up driving a lot of powersellers away from eBay stores. They’ll still sell, but they’ll do it via a non-eBay store. Not that great of a move.
Hey, maybe Paypal will stop stealing their customer’s money all the time - in my case because we had too many sales, they said, so they stole all our money and are holding it for 6 months, on a 7 year old account with no chargebacks! -, and actually get human beings to respond to email about their theft.
Unlikely…
Is asking a dozen questions at an article’s end a good way to avoid drawing your own conclusions?
Spam in my mail increased , and since Google is trying to please everyone they will have no control in the end. Watch what happens.
Harry makes an excellent!
It also very interesting to listen to some VPs/Directors from Google @ various conferences. It is becoming very clear that some just don’t have the vision and obviously new products from Google have been disappointing. The whole thing looks more and more like junior level projects (not at Stanford level) - with an exception that all students are millionaires! Good for them!
At eBay, looks like Dutta made $2.6B deal, and Jordan paid the price. It is interesting to see how fast Dutta moved away from Skype.
It seems to me that E-bay is trying to set up a monopoly with PayPal. Isn’t this unlawful?
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