Advertisement
Canada markets open in 4 hours 59 minutes
  • S&P/TSX

    22,107.08
    +194.56 (+0.89%)
     
  • S&P 500

    5,248.49
    +44.91 (+0.86%)
     
  • DOW

    39,760.08
    +477.75 (+1.22%)
     
  • CAD/USD

    0.7352
    -0.0020 (-0.27%)
     
  • CRUDE OIL

    81.80
    +0.45 (+0.55%)
     
  • Bitcoin CAD

    95,963.53
    +929.89 (+0.98%)
     
  • CMC Crypto 200

    885.54
    0.00 (0.00%)
     
  • GOLD FUTURES

    2,213.80
    +1.10 (+0.05%)
     
  • RUSSELL 2000

    2,114.35
    +44.19 (+2.13%)
     
  • 10-Yr Bond

    4.1960
    0.0000 (0.00%)
     
  • NASDAQ futures

    18,491.00
    -12.75 (-0.07%)
     
  • VOLATILITY

    12.97
    +0.19 (+1.49%)
     
  • FTSE

    7,952.39
    +20.41 (+0.26%)
     
  • NIKKEI 225

    40,168.07
    -594.66 (-1.46%)
     
  • CAD/EUR

    0.6810
    +0.0005 (+0.07%)
     

How 'eBay' got its name: It was originally a site about ebola in the Bay Area

Pierre Omidyar
Pierre Omidyar

REUTERS/Tim Shaffer eBay founder and chairman Pierre Omidyar We've always wondered how eBay got its name. The "e" seems like it might stand for "electronic" — common shorthand in a lot of company names from the dot-com era, but what about Bay?

Now we know, thanks to a profile of founder Pierre Omidyar in New York Magazine.

The eccentric engineer was obsessed with t he public-health system's inability to cope with large-scale health crises, particularly ebola It was around the time of the movie "Outbreak," so the idea of a pandemic was in a lot of people's minds.

After purchasing the domain ebay.com he filled the site with pages of ebola-related content.

ADVERTISEMENT

So "e" stood for "ebola," and "Bay" for "Bay Area."

Andrew Rice at New York Magazine reports:

In August 1995, as General Magic [his previous company] began to show signs of financial distress, Omidyar took advantage of the Labor Day weekend to program a simple auction service and posted a link to it on eBay.com. He soon recruited a company president, Skoll, whose first management decision was to remove the alarming Ebola content, over Omidyar’s objection that it was still drawing lots of traffic.

Read the rest of Rice's profile of the billionaire and his new media organization, First Look Media, in New York Magazine.

NOW WATCH: How to know if you're smart



More From Business Insider