Internet Life

Year Started Off on the Wrong Foot for eBay

CEO retiring

By Vlad Constandes, SEO News Editor

22nd of January 2008, 22:06 GMT

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There are only three CEOs right now in Silicon Valley that have very high profiles because of the pioneering work that they have done with commercializing the Internet industry: Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, Yahoo! Inc.'s Jerry Yang and, last but not least, eBay's Meg Whitman. Their ranks will unfortunately grow even thinner with Meg getting ready to step down from her position at the helm of her company, as the "Wall Street Journal" reports.

Quoting unnamed sources "familiar with the matter", WSJ says that in the past months

eBay's CEO has been delegating more and more of her daily responsibilities to her lieutenants, in order to make the transition run smoother and to give them time to accommodate with the fact that she won't be there any more. A date for her retirement announcement has not been set so far, everything depending on the way the figures for the fourth quarter of 2007 turn out.

Most likely, her successor will be named John Donahoe, aged 47, who has personally been hired by Ms. Whitman, in 2005, and who has tried his best so far to turn around the decreasing rate of the company's business growth. So far, he's been involved with simplifying the auction web site and that didn't seem to impact a lot on the figures.

The 3rd quarter numbers showed a 3 percent decrease and that makes Meg's leaving the position and company an even tougher blow, but hopefully one that eBay will be able to recover from. The last two years of her reign seemed to be disastrous, showing the company losing about half of its value. She might have been a wizard with Web 1.0, but ever since it evolved to 2.0 it has become a harder pill to swallow.

And just a rumor, Meg Whitman was said last month to have been penciled into her friend Mitt Romney's potential presidential cabinet. Could this be the reason behind her stepping down?

TAGS:

ebay | ceo | meg whitman | retirement | mitt romney

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