eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 as AuctionWeb. Omidyar created the online auction service as part of a personal website, allowing users to list items and bid against one another over the internet.
The company initially operated under the AuctionWeb name. One frequently repeated story says that Omidyar created the service to help his fiancée trade Pez dispensers, but the company later acknowledged that this anecdote was fabricated by a public-relations manager. The platform’s early success instead came from a broad range of user-listed goods.
In 1997, AuctionWeb adopted the eBay name, derived from Omidyar’s consulting business, Echo Bay Technology Group. The marketplace became a major example of peer-to-peer electronic commerce, connecting buyers and sellers without requiring the company to own conventional retail inventory.
eBay is sometimes grouped with online retailers such as Amazon, but its original model was primarily a marketplace and auction platform. Independent sellers listed products, while eBay provided the technology, search tools and transaction framework.