If you are a human, living in the current times it is actually pretty difficult to not know eBay. The USA based multinational e-Commerce platform is a household name around the world today. But let me ask you a quick question. Do you know what e in eBay stands for? And no, it’s not electronic.
The company that would eventually become eBay was started by a guy named Pierre Omidyar. Initially Omidyar started through the platform AuctionWeb. A broken laser printer was the first thing that was sold on the platform. Omidyar however wanted a different name.
He wanted the name EchoBay. His plans to get the name came to a halt when he realized that the domain name EchoBay.com was already taken. Omidyar then opted for the closest name he could get. He shortened the first word of the term ‘Echo Bay’ into an ‘e’. The name eBay was thus born.
eBay along with other companies like Amazon are considered the forebears of the Internet revolution. The domain name space during those early times were singlehandedly dominated by the .com TLD. This percolated into their branding and business decisions as well.
Situation has changed now, with different ccTLDs, new gTLDs, emoji domains as well as even blockchain domains becoming more and moreavailable. A .com TLD is still the strongest among all TLDs, but its dominance has certainly been weathered away. These cases, however, do help us to ponder over the evolution of the domain name space. And what a vital role it played in framing business giants and the global marketing ecosystem.
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