Here’s an interesting but hilariously misinformed item on the New York Times’ Bits blog raising the possibility of Amazon buying eBay.
The author and the dozens of commenting readers argue that either Amazon should buy eBay’s auction technology or build its own. That’s brilliant, Einstein. Except that Amazon buried its auctions section about seven years ago.
For most of the Internet age, eBay has been a Wall Street darling, while Amazon’s stock has been in the cellar. That’s turned around dramatically in the past year, with Amazon’s stock price tripling.
I don’t see anything Amazon has to gain by buying eBay, do you? Amazon already has all the sellers they want. The only thing they’d do is inherit eBay’s problems.
I think Amazon has enough to worry about. I have a hunch that their Marketplace business is down over the past year. Once that becomes common knowledge they’re going to have a tough time explaining why. And there are enough distractions with this Fulfillment by Amazon boondoggle.
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3 Comments
Steve,
You said “I have a hunch that their Marketplace business is down over the past year.”
I would tend to agree. Now, what do you base this hunch on? buyers shopping elsewhere? People not reading as much?
Let us know!
I agree that eBay in terms of Half.com is dead compared to Amazon for books students and causual readers buy. I’ve had sales of 40 to 1 in terms of Amazon to Half with the “1″ sale on half going to the usual dropshippers (milde4/quality7…gretmedia…thebookgrove…kalakuta, etc). But honestly, I’ve never had a better period (yes, condidering it is a holiday season) with eBay in terms of collectible and rare books that the stupid number plugging “isbn-book-scouts” can’t find.
In resect to the book trade – Amazon is better than eBay for books that are popular or needed by students – but cannot compete with eBay with books that are “collectible” or “rare”.
These days competition is really tough, and hopefully, and this sounds bad, the amatueurs will finally drop out and let the rest of us who need this business to survive get on with what we do…
Peter
minneapolis
My hunch is based on the fact that Amazon reported a big slowdown in growth in Marketplace in their annual report at the end of last year. Since then, the same factors are still at play — continued technical problems and Amazon’s emphasis on free/Prime shipping for new items, making the third party sellers less attractive.
I’ve noticed that it’s harder than ever for us to sell books, and it’s not due to a lack of customers on Amazon, it’s other problems.