Students Embarrass eBay With Firefox Add-On

An anonymous reader sends along a posting from the Grooveking blog on a group of Stanford students who got together to help promote Firefox and ended up releasing a long overdue eBay Toolbar for Firefox before Mozilla and eBay could release their jointly developed extension in Europe. Mozilla's COO said the preemptive release of the eBay Toolbar had ruffled some feathers among European eBay execs. "Besides basic search features, it removes external ads on the site and allows users to see thumbnail pictures on ALL search items, even those sellers didn't pay for. An eBay toolbar has been long overdue... eBay can't be too enthusiastic about this toolbar since it cuts directly into its main sources of revenue: ads and thumbnail fees. But eBay users get a really good deal."

Makes sense of this slogan

Certainly reinforces the Spread Firefox group's original slogan: Take Back the Web.

Re:Makes sense of this slogan

... until Ebay forces viewers to view the ads or the page won't load properly (as do some sites). Here's hoping that doesn't happen..

Re:Makes sense of this slogan

I have plenty of bandwidth. I just don't want to see the ads. Maybe Firefox can load them and display them on my /dev/null monitor.

Re:Makes sense of this slogan

so, are you ready to pay for content? cause its either adds that pay, or you pay for content. Someone has to.

eBay is a service provider, not a content provider. And believe me, they do get paid for their services.

Re:Makes sense of this slogan

I am perfectly happy to have eBay send ad content to my computer. I'm also perfectly happy to have my computer ignore that content. Their markup interpreted by my computer. Showing me adds never made them any money to begin with, so skipping them doesn't hurt anyone.

Re:Makes sense of this slogan

I am perfectly happy to have eBay send ad content to my computer. I'm also perfectly happy to have my computer ignore that content. Their markup interpreted by my computer.

Which is the way the web is ment to work in the first place. What gets displayed and how it is displayed being entirely down to the browser, all the site can do is ask the browser nicely to render a certain way.

Re:Makes sense of this slogan

so, are you ready to pay for content? cause its either adds that pay, or you pay for content. Someone has to.


Personally, I have no problems with ads as long as they are static and stay at the top of the page. If it's for a product I'm interested I'll even open the referenced link in another browser tab to get more information, and perhaps even buy it. But any ads that blinks, moves, or pops up gets immediately blocked if it somehow gets around NoScript and Adblock. Content providers know that those types of ads are not only irritating but waste users resources and time as well so should not be surprised when they are treated in kind.

Re:Makes sense of this slogan

eBay can't be too enthusiastic about this toolbar since it cuts directly into its main sources of revenue: ads and thumbnail fees.

I'm sorry but TFS is just wrong. Paypal is their main source of revenue. Believe me, double dipping by charging both sellers and buyers a fee to use the service is very lucrative.

Nice.

Suck it, Ebay. Stop trying to hamstring your sellers. Your costs were exponentially lower when you were born, making more money doesn't entitle you to start charging more money for no real reason.

Re:Nice.

making more money doesn't entitle you to start charging more money for no real reason.

No, but throughout the majority of the world (even China is adopting it), supply and demand does. If the demand for ebay's services increases, why shouldn't they be able to match demand with an increase in price?

Re:Nice.

I take it you don't have a nice job, or if you do, you don't accept higher compensation than anyone else at your company. After all, your costs aren't really related to the quantity or quality of work you do and there's probably somewhere you can cut out to lower your costs even more.

For instance, you don't need a large house for your family, you could live in a trailer. They're not so bad now, with water and electricity hookups and whatnot. Also, you don't need to eat fresh food every day. A 50 pound bag of rice lasts quite a while and costs very little. Spice it up with whatever is cheapest in the veggie department, and some kind of beans for protein.

You can cut your electricity by getting rid of your computer, and you'll save on ISP costs too. Thrift stores have all the almost recent styles at a fraction of the price of the department stores, sometimes charging by the pound rather than the item.

Oh you don't? They why do you begrudge Ebay charging what they're worth?

Of course, the irony of this rant is that I actually despise Ebay's pricing scheme, and I often consider the question of "What have Ebay done to earn that money." Specifically in regards to their habit of charging per dollar won rather than per page viewed.

Since the final price of an item has more to do with the item than ebay's efforts on its behalf, It's absurd that they are paid based on the final price. The absurdity however is not that Ebay seeks such ridiculous compensation, but that any competitor which proposes a saner pricing scheme (for instance, bandwidth, page placement, size, etc.) for what is basically a national classified ad-system with fulfillment tracking will need exceptionally deep pockets just to get off the ground due to the nature of the online auction industry and the network effect.

Re:Nice.

"Oh you don't? They why do you begrudge Ebay charging what they're worth?"

Ah.

What something is "worth" is what somebody is willing to pay. No more, no less.

Absent some meaningfull competition, you're paying what ebay demands, not what it's worth.

Re:Nice.

No, but throughout the majority of the world (even China is adopting it), supply and demand does. If the demand for ebay's services increases, why shouldn't they be able to match demand with an increase in price?

Excepting of course that the free market is a harsh mistress and in an idealized environment does not tolerate large profit margins. If there are large profit margins it means that a competitor should start up with lower profits. Absent such natural checks and balances capitalism would be a disaster for most people. Unfortunately frequently the checks and balances aren't actually present. The free market isn't ideal: Consumers aren't entirely rational, information is frequently withheld, participants commit fraud, governments meddle, and sometimes natural monopolies form. When the market is distorted in such a way, one can no longer reasonably hold that the prices are necessarily reasonable and should be accepted without question.

eBay might be such an example. Thanks to the network effect, eBay is enjoying a very natural monopoly. If a seller jumps to another service, they look 90% or more of their potential buyers, dramatically reducing effective demand for their product and lowering their own profits. As a result the sellers generally don't leave. Given so few sellers, buyers have little incentive to jump services, creating a feedback loop.

Given this overwhelming cost to jumping services, there is no realistic competition. Absent competition, eBay can afford to jack prices and generate large profit margins with no real risk.

I don't know if eBay really is gouging, if regulation (the typical solution) is needed, and if so what sort of regulation we should enact, but it is definitely within the realm of possibility. You can't simply wave around supply-and-demand like it's a magical wand that magically makes everything good.

Re:Nice.

Your costs were exponentially lower when you were born, making more money doesn't entitle you to start charging more money for no real reason.

You're absolutely right, eBay having higher profits doesn't entitle them to charge more for no reason.

Being a business allows them to charge more for no reason. Don't like it? Don't use them.

I don't know why people feel that companies have to justify price increases with some rationale of higher costs for them. Companies do that to make purchasers feel better, but the truth of the matter is that companies (regulated industries aside) can charge whatever the hell they feel like for what they provide. EBay is not in business to make $x profit per transaction; they are in business to maximize $x.

Re:Nice.

They're allowed to charge whatever they feel like in much the same way that I'm allowed to be a total asshole. Yeah, it's allowed in a free society, but that doesn't make it good or smart.

Trying to maximize profits at the detriment of your own customers is common practice, and that's largely why so many things are completely screwed up. The world would be better if people were willing to settle for an honest buck, a modest profit, instead of screwing over everyone as far as they're allowed with no consideration for the ramifications.

Re:Nice.

Well, that's a debate about capitalism. Some would argue that your system is inefficient, and would therefore not make best use of resources, and would therefore result in less for everyone.

That's not the debate about capitalism-- my "system" isn't a system. Capitalism is a system of economic freedom, but "economic freedom" does not require that you adopt ruthless unethical business practices any more than personal freedom requires people to be assholes. It gives you the freedom to do so, but that freedom is not a moral imperative to act viciously.

And then eBay said....

Hello lawsuit.

Embarrass?

Why is this such a big deal? It's a lot easier for a bunch of student programmers like this to release a toolbar than it is for eBay.

The problem isn't making the plugin. That's relatively easy. I guarentee is doesn't take eBay very long to make a toolbar for their own site, assuming they have programmers that are a least a bit competent.

No, the problem is testing. If an offical toolbar from eBay causes even the smallest problem, eBay is on the hook. For a bunch of students this isn't a problem.

*Was* the problem testing?

Or was the problem trying to figure out a way to implement it that increased ad revenues?

Re:*Was* the problem testing?

I don't think the point is that profit is bad. The point is that the students can just figure out what they think is most useful to put in their program and write it, while the corporate programmers have to wait for a plan from the business side of things. Not, "What features can we put into this thing that would be cool/good?", which most programmers could figure out pretty quickly, but, "How much will this help our bottom line? How many resources is it worth assigning to this project? What features can we add that would help our profits? Would some features jeopardize our profits? Do we need to build any restrictions in? How does this fit in with our overall strategy?" These are valid questions to ask, and the fact that they're asked and discussed underscores why all the cool stuff people do for projects in college doesn't wind up being used by anyone. But the questions still take time, and sometimes result in a product that's not as useful to its users.

And then after that there's the issue of making it release-quality, which is more important for a company with a reputation than a bunch of students.

Re:Embarrass?

Sounded great to me, I use eBay a lot. I installed it, found that it's completely US-centric with no option to localise. In addition all the extras such as Amazon search and Froogle search are all focused on the US.

I uninstalled and will begin looking for something similar which supports users outside the US.

On a side note, has it really taken this long for somebody to realise that an eBay toolbar might be a good idea??

Ebay

Well then they are ether going to have to change there site code or talk to the students to get those ads back or something.... EBay shame on you for not releasing you own toolbar so this didnt happen

So, how many people

Just installed it and started typing in their personal information, with absolutely no idea what this plugin was doing with it?

Uh huh. Oh, now you're thinking through the security implications.

It's probably not a particularly clever piece of phishing, but the next one might be.

Money, Money, Money

"eBay can't be too enthusiastic about this toolbar since it cuts directly into its main sources of revenue: ads and thumbnail fees."

That is why Ebay have not finished their own toolbar yet. They were too busy trying to figure out how to code the bar without messing up their revenue streams. Had they have just made the bar functional and user friendly, they might have already finished it. Fortunately for everyone else, the Stanford group was only concerned about a functional, working toolbar.

EBay was Late Because...

It was trying to figure out how to load up more ads...?

Re:EBay was Late Because...

Oh, I figured eBay was late because she'd been fucking Craig's List.

Toolbar looks cool and all...

... but it should be mentioned that they could create it that fast only thanks to breaking 173 Microsoft patents.

Read the Heartwarming story...

...of a couple of spunky Stanford kids with nothing going for them. And a coach, who believed they had it in them all along...

DMCA notice

in 3.. 2..

Cool. Not surprising, but cool.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

A couple guys who want to do something they think is cool turned out to be faster at it than a couple corporations trying to do something to monetize what they perceive as something users want.

Let me put on my surprised face.

Well....

eBay can't be too enthusiastic about this toolbar since it cuts directly into its main sources of revenue: ads and thumbnail fees.

True, very true, but if the exec's hadn't been sitting around with their "thumbs up thier as^H^HeBays"
and released *something*, then they would not have had thier thunder^Wbirds stolen.

(ok, ok, put the pointy stick down, I'll stop!)

Quote source?

Mozilla's COO said the preemptive release of the eBay Toolbar had ruffled some feathers among European eBay execs.

Where does the quote in the summary come from? It's not in any of TFAs.

"Ignore" sellers?

Does it let me "ignore" sellers by name, feedback ratio and feedback quantity so I never see their listings? If it does, I'll download it right now. There are half a dozen or so "power sellers" who flood the search terms I regularly look for with auctions I wouldn't bid on in a million years. And then there are all the 98.2% positive feedback guys who I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole (99% is my normal cutoff) and all the obviously re-registered accounts that are too slick to legitimately have only 8 feedbacks.

I'd very much like an "ignore" option.

Re:"Ignore" sellers?

98.2% positive feedback? What's wrong with that? You do realize that that's less than 4 negatives for 200 transactions? It's so easy to end up with retaliatory negatives from sellers when you use your account for both buying and selling.

Don't be a chickenshit. And for fuck's sake don't leave negative retaliatory feedback when I give you a neutral. The ebay feedback system is so broken that people like you think a single negative and fifty positives is a complete disaster. It definitely needs more granularity.

Re:"Ignore" sellers?

It's so easy to end up with retaliatory negatives from sellers when you use your account for both buying and selling.

And I give good feedback when the transaction sucked and I'm a buyer because no seller leaves feedback until the buyer does. It's blackmail. I paid you within 30 seconds of the close of the auction. You should give me feedback then, the transaction is done, as far as you are concerned. But no, I don't get any feedback until I've left feedback. If the damn thing takes 6 weeks to get here, I have the choice of telling the world that the transaction sucked (and I get negative retaliatory feedback when I've done nothing wrong), or I give good feedback or no feedback to protect my own feedback ratio.

eBay purposefully slants such things toward the seller, because those are the people that pay the fees. eBay could come up with all sorts of ways to prevent retaliation. If I'm a buyer, I've paid (verified by my paypal account that eBay saw the payment flow through) then the seller can't give me negative/neutral feedback once I give feedback. If I did something wrong, they'll know it long before the item arrives at my house. To accept my payment and wait to see what I leave for feedback before leaving their own is blackmail and makes the feedback system mostly useless.

Re:"Ignore" sellers?

The new feedback system that just went into testing should help eliminate this. The problem is that the transaction is NOT finished when you pay. You could still dispute the credit card charge, or return the package, or file a complaint with the USPS, or any of a hundred other things. The new system *IS* more discrete and categorized, which hopefully means they will let us leave feedback in stages.

Also, I am in favor of not showing either party the feedback that the other user left until they have both left it. That would almost completely eliminate retaliatory feedback.

PS: I am a seller, and I actually do leave positive feedback as soon as the (proper) payment arrives.

Re:"Ignore" sellers?

I'll counter your argument from a seller's perspective (I've bought and sold on eBay). I have sold items before where I have left positive feedback immediately after payment was received. Shipped said items well-packed day after payment was received. Still, I was left negative feedback for perceived false advertisement of an item. One other occasion, I refunded a ~$150 payment after a used video card I shipped (was working when it shipped out) was returned defective. Did I get positive feedback? No, I was given a blistering feedback that really shook my belief in the eBay experience. Patience, open communication, and reason are important when buying and selling on eBay, but some folks bring a lot of angst. By and large my experience on eBay has been very positive, especially with reputable sellers who have good feedback (99%+). But I pucker anytime I sell something, because you never know who you're going to have to deal with. My feedback stands at 98.9%, and I have to work harder because of that sub-99% blemish (ship same day payment was received, overpack for protection, answer questions within an hour of receiving them, etc.).

Here's hoping the new feedback system helps everybody.

Excellent Work!

This is hysterical. I hope Ebay and Mozilla keep dragging their feet long enough for new users to get used to the other toolbar. Once that happens, they'll almost be forced to implement some of the features just to convince people to switch.

Inevitable problems

Here's the problem. Intelligent people with decent coding knowledge created a free piece of software that sounds pretty good. Ebay appearantly doesn't want them to use it, and started raising a ruckus. But what happens when hundreds of people with programming skills start doing things like this, especially if computer programming becomes part of high school curriculum? ( http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/15/142 0238 [slashdot.org] ) One day, the flood will hit, Ebay, Microsoft, Apple, and everything else will collapse, and the Open Source Community will rejoice.

Re:Inevitable problems

Actually, I assume that the instant OSS development becomes ubiquitous in the teenage demographic that the OSS community is going to pretty much suck.

More than embarrassment

They've done more than embarrass eBay. They both released their plugin first, and done it "better" from a customer standpoint by bypassing ads and including all pictures. eBay cannot simply release their plugin now, as informed users are going to pick the one that has a better UI (one without ads and with more pictures). They also cannot simply change their site functionality to break the student plugin, as they'll alienate customers who are using it. Even if they did that quickly to minimise market penetration it would only be a temporary solution, as any changes will likely be worked around quickly. They'd back to the problem of competing with a plugin that has no ads and better functionality.

Sounds kind of like DRM CDs vs. digital format music. You don't have to be a lawyer to figure out if the customer prefers better functionality. Let's hope eBay takes a different approach than the recording industry has. I'm not optimistic.

Market research

These students (and probably several posts appearing in this thread) have just given eBay some free, valuable market research. Pay attention:

1. eBay has great brand awareness. People know about it, and the opinion is generally positive. Hell, it can't be too negative if a bunch of programmer (lazy) students (even lazier) are writing software on their time to access eBay features.

2. Users LOATHE ads. This should be obvious. Is it just me, or are advertisements starting to have a reverse effect? You see an advertisement or commercial spot, and suddenly you're pissed off at the company in question for ramming advertising down your throat and find yourself not wanting to buy whatever they're selling, even if you need it.

3. eBay's "gallery" view stuff hurts the overall user experience. I understand they want to make more money, but the fact that one of the first things these programmers bypassed is the gallery exclusion garbage is very telling. People don't want to click through even 1 or 2 things to see a picture of an item. They want to see it immediately, particularly those who haven't the foggiest about web design, image hosting, or listing fees. That group most likely has no idea why there's so much inconsistency between item listings on eBay, and it's a matter of confusion on an already intimidating (to a new user) website.

It should also tell eBay something about itself. eBay has been around for something like 11 years, Firefox for 5 or 6, and it's been quite popular for the last couple of years (read: other big companies have been producing toolbars for Firefox without much problem). Why did this even have to happen? Get with it eBay...

Where's the Toolbar?

I distinctly read "an e-bay toolbar for FireFox" but what I see on the site is a hacked version *of* FireFox. These are two distinctly different things. Could someone please point out the individual toolbar download? I'm certainly not going to install a second version of FireFox just to get some toolbar included.

Re:Where's the Toolbar?

If you visit the site with FIREFOX as your browser, it offers to install the toolbar. If you visit the site with EXPLORER as your browser, it offers to install firefox and the toolbar (making the assumption that you don't have firefox already installed.) Just access the plugin site with firefox and you should be okay.

damn students

Can't they simply go back to creating Counter Strike maps.
Oh wait...

Oh no, we're embarassed

We're embarassed. All we have is our youth, billions of dollars and our good looks. Whoo hoo, I'm buying a walk in humidor.

ToS violation, not DCMA

No encryption or security was bypassed so it is not a DCMA violation. However, it does directly violate the ToS of their website:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreement .html [ebay.com]

In other words, you're accessing their content without accessing their site, which is a violation of their ToS. This is theft. They will accordingly code their site to block any access from this new "toolbar".

Re:ToS violation, not DCMA

No, no, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Violation of ToS =! Theft. Say that over and over again until you get that absurd idea out of your head.

If they want to block access from the toolbar (probably impossible since the processing is done on the end-user's computer), let them go ahead. But the end user is under no obligation to stop using said toolbar.

Goes to show

"Commercial" software (which doesn't necessarily mean that you pay for it, only that some corporation is behind its creation) gives you what the company wants you to have.

Free software gives you what you want to have.

Two letters come to mind when reading ..

..and one of them repeats: L O L

Mozilla not embarrassed?

After all, this was a joint project between Mozilla and eBay, wasn't it? I'm surprised that implication didn't make it to the summary.

Oh wait, I'm not.

All very well, but a long way from home!

Hmmm... There's no way to tell this toolbar that you don't live in the USA and that you'd like to use a local ebay site. So much for ebay users in Australia, India, Canada, the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Ireland, etc.
But wait, that's only about 6 users, isn't it? (Pity I'm one of them.)

Besides basic search features, it removes ads

Too bad. I go to ebay to search for and find bargains on second hand stuff.
I'm there to SAVE MONEY. I don't want to see ads, I'm not interested in ads, I find them annoying as hell.
I don't buy anything new, ever. Well, I buy some cheap shoes, jeans and T-shirts new about once every 5 years at a local dept. store but that's all I ever buy new. I save a lot of money by buying used stuff and even more by finding used/broken stuff on the curb. I shop ebay for parts to repair the stuff I find.

I don't want to see any ads anywhere, not online, not on TV, not on billboards.
I block ads at my firewall with Smoothwall & Adzapper.
I mute TV commercials so fast your head would spin.

So to ebay, too bad for you. We the people are really sick and tired of ads and commercials and we're fighting back. You already make an obscene amount of money from auction fees, paypal fees, skype fees and god knows what else. If some people want to find bargains and not be assaulted with annoying ads you're just going to have to suck it up and live with it. You can TRY to force all the ads you want down my throat by my firewall just says "NO." to your annoying crap. You might put a stop to the new firefox tool but you will NOT push ads past my firewall, try all you want, I encourage you.

What a joke: eBay working on FF toolbar

Not all the eBay site even works with Firefox, e.g. the "Sales feature" for eBay shops. eBay is just doing propaganda, not surprising for a late capitalistic criminal organisation. Someone said that they would not piss off customers by disabling the third party toolbar, gosh is he in for a surprise.

fees? What does that have to do with the Toolbar?

No surprise that a post about eBay brings out unrelated complaints about fees. The Toolbar never had ad banners, and in fact you can fill up about the whole thing with the various search buttons (just like the Google toolbar). I did customer service for the Toolbar, and it was free, didn't spam you, didn't spy on you, and really wasn't a gauranteed source of profit. It was just a nice thing to give members who wanted it. Not many people used it, and I'm suprised they didn't can the whole thing. The only reason they didn't build it for Firefox was the same reason they didn't program Enhanced Image Services for Macintosh; there just wasn't enough incentive. Believe me, they wanted to, but I think more directly profitable innovations are going to take a little higher priority. If you want to complain about fees, go to powersellersunite or post on eBay's boards like everybody else.

When will companies wake up?

We do not want to see pages full of advertisement. Especially not when they move around. This was already clear with the tag.

I even hate it when movies I want to see start playing before I pressed start.

I myself use several different methods to avoid seeing spam.
1) http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm [mvps.org] (Update the hosts file once per month with a cron job)
2) Adblock
3) http://www.privoxy.org/ [privoxy.org]
4) Adblock

and for some sites that I want to see without the stoopid ads all over or where I do not like the standard layout (like slashdot or Toms hardware) I use http://userstyles.org/ [userstyles.org]

OK, perhaps I am overactive, but I am now unable to watch the internet on an other computer, because of all the ads that are trown to me.

All this should be a hint to companies that people do niot want this. Ebay should look at who its base customers are and serve them. Ignore the extra money you can make. It pisses people off.

But as it is a company, the management will be only there for three years, or so, so as long as they can milk it, who cares, right?

It works only with ebay.com

I've downloaded and installed it. However, anyone wishing to use it should be aware that it only works with ebay.com at the moment. It isn't much use for those of us in the rest of the world.

ebay can do better....

If ebay focused more of their attention on becoming an open platform that people can flexibly use for barter and exchange - and if they opened up paypal peppercoin style or something - then they would be working in the right direction. Right now they seem a bit closed off to me, not to mention making random acquisitions like skype which make them look like that media company which aquired aol, and that, in the end, is going to lose them revenue.

Re:And now....

What was the first reason, boycotting Microsoft and Internet Explorer?