An Inside Look At eBay's Technology

endychavez writes with a CIO Insight profile giving a look inside eBay and its technology platform. The company has 40,000 outside developers working to increase its value and efficiency. From the article: "'They are way ahead of other companies' in terms of supporting developers, says one application builder... 'This a new wave of business,' says [another developer's marketing director]. 'eBay is a supplier, a marketing channel and a competitor. It's a weird arrangement.' ... 'If you can't split it, you can't scale it,' says Eric Billingsley, head of eBay Research Labs. 'We've made ourselves masters of virtualization.' ... eBay is able to publish a new version of its site every two weeks, adding 100,000 lines of code, all while in use."

Comments

Re:40,000 developers with 100,000 lines of new cod

[sottitron]

Yes, but do you have millions of people connected while you do that? And do you have millions of database trasnsactions and to-the-second sensitive activities going on while you roll out your code live?

Re:40,000 developers with 100,000 lines of new cod

[jasonhamilton]

Just a few thousand people, but it does involve millions of dollars in work for a company in the top 15 of the fortune 500.

Re:Do you even know what a "natural monopoly" is?

[roman_mir]

Ooh, please. A natural monopoly happens when only a specific firm can survive in the long run in a niche industry, for example when it is only possible to survive in a niche industry due to the scale (like what Canadian bank check storage company Symcor is doing by growing in a declining industry by the means of buying out the smaller firms in this industry.)

This does not apply to EBay. There are tons and tons and tons of auction sites on line, there are various stores and trading places and billboards. EBay is only important due to its popularity, but it is most certainly not the only auction that will survive in the long run and new ones will be created.