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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."
Certainly reinforces the Spread Firefox group's original slogan: Take Back the Web.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
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.
Hello lawsuit.
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.
Someone get that little bugger some Tucks. His ass is on fire!
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
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
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.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You had your chance.
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.
It was trying to figure out how to load up more ads...?
... but it should be mentioned that they could create it that fast only thanks to breaking 173 Microsoft patents.
839*929
...of a couple of spunky Stanford kids with nothing going for them. And a coach, who believed they had it in them all along...
in 3.. 2..
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Or was the problem trying to figure out a way to implement it that increased ad revenues?
I wonder what when the pictures of these students will somehow mysteriously show up on ebay, with rewards for eliminating these enemies of a global conglomerate.
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were capable of staying awake long enough.
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.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I have a second GOOD reason to upgrade to Firefox!
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!)
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
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.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
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.
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 ) One day, the flood will hit, Ebay, Microsoft, Apple, and everything else will collapse, and the Open Source Community will rejoice.
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were capable of staying awake long enough.
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.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
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...
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.
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
SLAPP.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Can't they simply go back to creating Counter Strike maps.
Oh wait...
Congradulations. You've just ignored all of those sellers who have sold 99 items or less, and have received a single negative feedback, potentially due to an earlier "revenge" feedback. Seriously, blanket cut-offs like this are going to rule out a good number of items. But hey, I guess that just means I won't be competing against your bids.
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.
God spoke to me.
No encryption or security was bypassed so it is not a DCMA violation. However, it does directly violate the ToS of their website:
t .html
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreemen
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".
Sure, Firefox can take back the Web.
But only Internet Explorer can hold back the Web.
"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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wanna know what's probably happening at eBay right now?
Hello? Dev team? When will the toolbar be ready? Really? Six weeks? I think not. Ship in 3 or you're fired. Click.
Hello? Systems D00ds / Web Devs? Put the security enhancements on hold. You have three weeks to figure out how to break the Stanford tool bar; the sooner the better. And then roll out the changes with some new eye-candy so we don't look like asses.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
..and one of them repeats: L O L
Because they were suspended for making them based on their schools?
eBay can't be too enthusiastic about this toolbar since it cuts directly into its main sources of revenue: ads and thumbnail fees.
Well, that's what you get when your business model involves BEING ANNOYING!! In other words selling ad space, the poison that is slowly eroding the entire Net... Businesses that can only make money on ad space piss me off, and I think this is ultimately a doomed business model as we all find more and more ways to block these annoying ads!!
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.
Right! They have become real fee whores over the years...
Get your act together eBay! You are loosing your core customer base with your fee whoring, poor service as of late, and not doing enough about fraud and dead beat bidders!!
Oh wait, I'm not.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
That should be: "Don't like it? Don't use them, tell others not to use them, and explain why you don't like them."
I don't know why people feel that companies have to justify price increases with some rationale of higher costs for them.
Because price and cost carries information about a company. If a company charges substantially more than cost, you know that you can probably find a better deal elsewhere. If you can't, then there may be a monopoly involved.
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.)
On /. a lot of generalities are stated in the limited context of the internet or computers generally. In fact intrusive advertising is all over the interweb which is no different from the real world.
I am not opposed to advertising and accept that a service has to be paid for one way or another. Whether the content provider is a TV station, free newspaper or an internet service the game is pretty well the same thing. On the other hand I am becoming increasingly pissed off by advertising covering every inch of space. Buses, bus stops, bus tickets, phone booths, serviettes, gas stations, walls buildings, parking meters, toilets ... the internet ...the list is endless.
Of course the solution is in our own hands. If we don't like what eBay does we can stop going there; they will soon react if enough customers vote with their feet. I have almost stopped watching TV as the ads have become so intrusive that the programs are no longer worth watching. Heck, I have even stopped using porn sites for the same reasons!
Plugins like the one under discussion are a short term solution. In the longer term eBay will find a way of blocking them, no doubt motivating someone to try something else. The real solution lies with us, the consumers, and until we stop behaving like sheep we will have to learn to live with in your face 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.
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.
Some Mozilla guy said that some eBay exec said they were pissed. Who cares?
Also, what ads are everyone talking about? I don't see any ads for anything other than eBay properties (Paypal, Skype, and eBay auctions).
Finally, if they're so incompetent, what is this? http://pages.ebay.com/ebay_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.
I dont' mind ebay charging whatever they want for their service.
I hope they don't mind my completely legal way to get around their charges.
I mean, if ebay is free to use the market and technology to set their prices, then I can do them same thing.
Surely, you agree with that, correct?
If ebay's charge, their obligation is to "maximize shareholder return", then I am under the same obligation to "minimize salary outlay. Really, I think you're right, but you only seem to give ebay the benefit of the free market, not me.
Especially with regard to monopolies, or near monopolies. Ebay has no serious competition, because it controls the marketplace. Thus, it is not subject to the normal rules of capitalism and should be subject to regulation.
If we have two numbers a and b, what is "a is exponentially bigger than b" supposed to mean? I certainly cannot think of a mathematically reasonable or valid answer.
I fear that "exponentially bigger" simply means "a lot bigger" or "substantially bigger." If this is all people mean - and I cannot imagine how they could mean more, while remaining accurate - then why not just say so?
this toolbar doesn't give me anything I cant get with the bookmarks toolbar.
... adding a small number of ads to their pages doesn't make Ebay an asshole.
Well, certainly not an asshole like those who'd pursue those ad-blocking/ad-dodging extensions.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
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 (Update the hosts file once per month with a cron job)
2) Adblock
3) http://www.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/
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?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
Capitalism is the philosophy that we SHOULD adopt ruthless, unethical business practices, because that is what is Good. It's the philosophy that when everyone seeks to maximize profit, the economy will be strong and we'll all be rich -- except for the poor, who are Bad people anyway and are only poor because they are lazy and deserve their lot.
For contrast, free markets disallow government intervention, while capitalism encourages government intervention when it can be used to increase profits -- say, by starting a war, or providing a monopoly on some service. Also, free markets disallow the use of force, while capitalism encourages it when it can be used to increase profits -- say, by murdering/imprisoning union leaders, or suing small competitors into oblivion.
Corporations, like any other organization, are ultimately in the hands of a handful of irrational, stupid, greedy Human beings who only care about their own interests and who make decisions based on instincts whose purpose is to enable survival in a radically different environment where killing small furry animals was the principal means of sustaining oneself and evading baboons and boars was a serious concern.
People running corporations have no idea how valuable good will is beyond the potential for their secretary's good will to result in a blowjob before the day's first martini break. Decisions made by the kind of people that get to the top of the corporate ladder are NOT based on reason -- they're based on instinct. Instinct is great for understanding how to manipulate others (ie: management); but it's absolutely shitty for understanding a marketing study or a sales report. It's even worse for being willing to listen to others. The kind of people that understand data almost never make it into positions of any kind of authority whatsoever, and those who listen to others are perceived as weak and are lucky to even make it into a corporate setting as something other than a technician or a janitor.
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.
AMEN to that one. FlashBlock is another good one - wherever there is a flash animation, it will show a "play button". To run the flash, you just click the button. You can whitelist sites too, for when you come across a site that is "too cool for html".
I agree, it doesn't make sense for numbers. For functions (say from the positive integers to the reals) it is reasonable to say "f is exponentially bigger than g" if f is in Omega(c^g(n)) for some constant c (in this sense).
It annoys me too. Yes, language evolves - but as you say, this usage doesn't really add any meaning over "a lot bigger" and adds confusion with the above exactly defined meaning.