Two days after posting record earnings ($25m) and revenue (over $1.7billion in cash and investments), eBay said Thursday that it is raising fees, some by as much as 100 percent, starting 31st January 2002.
"We recognize that price increases directly impact our users, so we do not raise fees lightly or without considering the impact to our community," the company said in a note to its customers.
eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said that the company needs the additional fees to help maintain its marketplace and to keep the company on a sound financial footing. He also said that the lack of any real competition to eBay and the company's goal of hitting $3 billion in revenue by 2005, played little role in the decision to increase fees.
The prices increases for eBay fees are as follows :-
News source: CNet News
"We recognize that price increases directly impact our users, so we do not raise fees lightly or without considering the impact to our community," the company said in a note to its customers.
eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said that the company needs the additional fees to help maintain its marketplace and to keep the company on a sound financial footing. He also said that the lack of any real competition to eBay and the company's goal of hitting $3 billion in revenue by 2005, played little role in the decision to increase fees.
The prices increases for eBay fees are as follows :-
- Items with an ending bid of up to $25, eBay's take will be now 5.25% (up from 5%)
- Items with an ending bid of up to $1000, the first $25 will be charged at 5.25%, and increase it's take on the next $975 to 2.75% (from 2.5%)
- On items that sell for more than $1,000, eBay will charge the same way as above, but will increase its cut on the amount over $1,000 from 1.25% to 1.5%.
Example, you sell an item for $150, you would pays eBay transaction fee of $4.75 (was $4.38), and someone selling an item for $1,500, would pay eBay $35.63 (from $31.88 under the old pricing scheme).
News source: CNet News
However, even more important than any of these new capabilities is the fact that it is designed from the ground up to deliver Trustworthy Computing. What I mean by this is that customers will always be able to rely on these systems to be available and to secure their information. Trustworthy Computing is computing that is as available, reliable and secure as electricity, water services and telephony.
Today, in the developed world, we do not worry about electricity and water services being available. With telephony, we rely both on its availability and its security for conducting highly confidential business transactions without worrying that information about who we call or what we say will be compromised. Computing falls well short of this, ranging from the individual user who isn't willing to add a new application because it might destabilize
their system, to a corporation that moves slowly to embrace e-business because today's platforms don't make the grade.
The events of last year -- from September's terrorist attacks to a number of malicious and highly publicized computer viruses -- reminded every one of us how important it is to ensure the integrity and security of our critical infrastructure, whether it's the airlines or computer systems. Computing is already an important part of many people's lives. Within ten years, it will be an integral and indispensable part of almost everything we do. Microsoft and the computer industry will only succeed in that world if CIOs, consumers
and everyone else sees that Microsoft has created a platform for Trustworthy Computing.
Every week there are reports of newly discovered security problems in all kinds of software, from individual applications and services to Windows, Linux, Unix and other platforms. We have done a great job of having teams work around the clock to deliver security fixes for any problems that arise. Our responsiveness has been unmatched -- but as an industry leader we can and must do better. Our new design approaches need to dramatically reduce the number of such issues that come up in the software that Microsoft, its partners and its customers create. We need to make it automatic for
customers to get the benefits of these fixes. Eventually, our software should be so fundamentally secure that customers never even worry about it.
No Trustworthy Computing platform exists today. It is only in the context of the basic redesign we have done around .NET that we can achieve this. The key design decisions we made around .NET include the advances we need to deliver on this vision. Visual Studio .NET is the first multi-language tool that is optimized for the creation of secure code, so it is a key foundation element.
I've spent the past few months working with Craig Mundie's group and others across the company to define what achieving Trustworthy Computing will entail, and to focus our efforts on building trust into every one of our products and services. Key aspects include:
Availability: Our products should always be available when our customers need them. System outages should become a thing of the past because of a software architecture that supports redundancy and automatic recovery. Self-management should allow for service resumption without user intervention in almost every case.
Security: The data our software and services store on behalf of our customers should be protected from harm and used or modified only in appropriate ways. Security models should be easy for developers to understand and build into their applications.
Privacy: Users should be in control of how their data is used. Policies for information use should be clear to the user. Users should be in control of when and if they receive information to make best use of their time. It should be easy for users to specify appropriate use of their information including controlling the use of email they send.
Trustworthiness is a much broader concept than security, and winning our customers' trust involves more than just fixing bugs and achieving "five-nines" availability. It's a fundamental challenge that spans the entire computing ecosystem, from individual chips all the way to global Internet services. It's about smart software, services and industry-wide cooperation.
There are many changes Microsoft needs to make as a company to ensure and keep our customers' trust at every level - from the way we develop software, to our support efforts, to our operational and business practices. As software has become ever more complex, interdependent and interconnected, our reputation as a company has in turn become more vulnerable. Flaws in a single Microsoft product, service or policy not only affect the quality of our platform and services overall, but also our customers' view of us as a company.
In recent months, we've stepped up programs and services that help us create better software and increase security for our customers. Last fall, we launched the Strategic Technology Protection Program, making software like IIS and Windows .NET Server secure by default, and educating our customers on how to get -- and stay -- secure. The error-reporting features built into Office XP and Windows XP are giving us a clear view of how to raise the level of reliability. The Office team is focused on training and processes
that will anticipate and prevent security problems. In December, the Visual Studio .NET team conducted a comprehensive review of every aspect of their product for potential security issues. We will be conducting similarly intensive reviews in the Windows division and throughout the company in the coming months.
At the same time, we're in the process of training all our developers in the latest secure coding techniques. We've also published books like "Writing Secure Code," by Michael Howard and David LeBlanc, which gives all developers the tools they need to build secure software from the ground up. In addition, we must have even more highly trained sales, service and support people, along with offerings such as security assessments and broad security solutions. I encourage everyone at Microsoft to look at what we've done so far and think about how they can contribute.
But we need to go much further.
In the past, we've made our software and services more compelling for users by adding new features and functionality, and by making our platform richly extensible. We've done a terrific job at that, but all those great features won't matter unless customers trust our software. So now, when we face a choice between adding features and resolving security issues, we need to choose security. Our products should emphasize security right out of the box, and we must constantly refine and improve that security as threats
evolve. A good example of this is the changes we made in Outlook to avoid email borne viruses. If we discover a risk that a feature could compromise someone's privacy, that problem gets solved first. If there is any way we can better protect important data and minimize downtime, we should focus on this. These principles should apply at every stage of the development cycle of every kind of software we create, from operating systems and desktop applications to global Web services.
Going forward, we must develop technologies and policies that help businesses better manage ever larger networks of PCs, servers and other intelligent devices, knowing that their critical business systems are safe from harm. Systems will have to become self-managing and inherently resilient. We need to prepare now for the kind of software that will make this happen, and we must be the kind of company that people can rely on to
deliver it.
This priority touches on all the software work we do. By delivering on Trustworthy Computing, customers will get dramatically more value out of our advances than they have in the past. The challenge here is one that Microsoft is uniquely suited to solve."
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