eBay encourages the sale of goods at fixed prices

EBay chief executive Meg Whitman said about 37% of the site's products were purchased directly without bidding, so it was in the process of "changing clothes" to target an electronic exchange.

This shift is partly due to the impact on the participants who do not want to wait until the end of the auction to determine if they are able to pay and risk losing something to buy. Whitman stressed that the company is preparing to launch a new service called eBay Express to gather items that are sold at fixed prices.

The total value of goods sold on eBay in the past three quarters was $ 10 billion. Concerning the problem of counterfeiting, Whitman said they regret the cases that happened but insisted they only occupy "less than 1 / 10,000 of the goods and that the phenomenon is also tending to decrease".

Referring to Skype, Whitman believes that the decision to buy an Internet phone company will help increase the value and reliability of transactions because buyers and sellers can communicate more easily, especially in the face of goods are valuable and need to exchange details like cars . Skype currently has 75 million customers and is attracting more than 200,000 new users.

Whitman affirmed that 2006 was the year of 'integrating and re-systemizing' the companies they bought. She predicts eBay and the PayPal payment system will face a strong competitive risk from Google.