Students Embarrass eBay With Firefox Add-On 269
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
And then eBay said.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Embarrass? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Money, Money, Money (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
*Was* the problem testing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense of this slogan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Embarrass? (Score:5, Insightful)
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??
Cool. Not surprising, but cool. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Makes sense of this slogan (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Nice. (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
More than embarrassment (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:Nice. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Oh no, we're embarassed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Goes to show (Score:5, Insightful)
Free software gives you what you want to have.
Re:So, how many people (Score:3, Insightful)
Great, I'll just tell grandma to follow this simple procedure to make sure the emails she's getting arent phishing attempts. She's going to be so happy now that she can install toolbars. Just open the XPI, make sure you're not using XPCOM, and check the JS, XUL, and, wait....um, the RDF, yeah. Oh, and there is another step for binaries. It's great that she's safe from ebay scams now. The parent had a good point, would YOU trust ebay software on your computer?
Re:Inevitable problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More than embarrassment (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense of this slogan (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Inevitable problems (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean the "hundreds of people with programming skills" who comprise open source community that forks projects at the drop of a hat because they can't check their egos at the door and work to make quality products TOGETHER? Some do, to be sure, but consider examples including the KDE vs GNOME vs every other window manager debate, the Firefox vs Iceweasel crap, and so forth... lots of projects that functionally do the same thing, or perhaps ARE the same thing just rebranded with very minor changes. My point is that they CAN'T rise up to "cast down [ebay/apple/ms/etc]" because they have no cohesive central dictatorial leadership (e.g. Linus, Steve Jobs, etc) to lead the way, so egos are what's driving the bus.
Please don't get me wrong.... I'd *LOVE* to see these big companies that run roughshod over their users toppled. I think that if all of the people who worked on Linux GUIs had some central leadership and managed to check their egos at the door, they could put together a GUI experience that would rival Apple's. But they're so fragmented that it's just not going to happen. (There are other examples, it's not just the Linux GUI situation that's the problem, but it's an obvious one to illustrate my point.)
The extreme openness of open software is also its Achilles' heel, because it tends to encourage fragmentation. Availability of source code isn't enough, you need central, dictatorial, visionary leadership as well.
Consider Linux (the kernel), Firefox, Apache, etc. These are amazingly successful open source projects... what do they have in common? Strong leadership, and internal conflict resolution to keep people willing to help, instead of forking the moment their egos get bruised.
With that, specific projects can (and have) be clear victories over the MS/etc alternatives. (E.g. Firefox). But in general the open source community needs to deal with this issue before they can start rejoicing.
Re:Nice. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:"Ignore" sellers? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Nice. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's truly impossible to quantify them, then how do you know they're undervalued? Maybe they're overvalued. Maybe they're valued exactly correctly. Maybe they're never valued exactly correctly, but on average they're about right (this is what I suspect is closest to the truth).
Seriously, with a small or even medium-sized business there is a fair amount of room for companies not understanding how these effects work. But big businesses studies how their actions affect their sales constantly. They know much better than you do how valuable "good will" is. I suspect that it isn't as valuable as you think, and that most consumers are more price-conscious than socially-conscious.
Maybe it would be a better world if that weren't the case - I wouldn't argue with that point.
Re:Makes sense of this slogan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:*Was* the problem testing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Nice. (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, a fair price for one man is a highway robbery to another, so we can still complain heartily.
Re:"Ignore" sellers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's hoping the new feedback system helps everybody.
Re:Makes sense of this slogan (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Nice. (Score:3, Insightful)
Care to prove that assertion? I've always found that part of the libertarian creed to be baseless.
Re:Makes sense of this slogan (Score:3, Insightful)