The first quarter turned profitable for eBay who makes every effort to make its marketplaces more attractive to online shoppers. More people were purchasing items on the ecommerce site and more merchants used its PayPal payment system. The first quarter revenue increased by 15.9% to $2.55 billion supported by a 23% growth at PayPal and a 12% rise at its marketplaces, says eBay. EBay is in the final stages of a three-year plan to revitalize its marketplaces unit, whose growth had slowed.

An ecommerce giant eBay plans to purchase Where, a company that provides local advertising to mobile phones. The terms of the deal were not disclosed by eBay but it said that it expects to close it in the second quarter of 2011. The purchase would not affect the results of the earlier forecast, said the company in a blog post announcement. eBay believes the deal would enhance its ability to connect retailers and shoppers.

eBay Inc plans to purchase most of the stake in a Turkish auction website GittiGidiyor as a part of its move to strengthen its main business. The US-based ecommerce giant bought a minority stake in Istanbul-based GittiGidiyor in 2007 and said on Tuesday that it would buy more shares to raise its ownership to 93 percent. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deals comes two weeks after the company announced its plans to buy e-commerce service provider GSI Commerce for $2 billion, a deal seen as an attempt to rival No. 1 Web retailer Amazon.com Inc.

eBay reported that resellers are making fortunes on listing Apple’s iPad 2 on the auction site because they set the selling prices as high as 53% above retail. The company released stats this week that show the average selling price of a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2 since its launch three weeks ago has been $697, $198 over Apple's retail price. That represents a profit of 40%. Meantime, the average auction price of the 64GB Wi-Fi model has reached $963, or 53% above retail, while the 64GB Wi-Fi/3G iPad 2 averaged $1,235, 49% higher than the list price of $829.

eBay Inc has made a takeover offering to an ecommerce service provider GSI Commerce, a deal that may rival Amazon.com Inc. The online auction company wants to purchase GSI for a price of $1.96 billion. This week eBay offered GSI shareholders $29.25 per share in cash, a premium of 50.9 percent from the stock's closing price on Friday. "It's one of the few fulfillment operations that could rival Amazon," BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis said. "Amazon is fulfilling its third-party sellers more and more. eBay is all third-party sellers."

eBay ended up with a win a long lasting lawsuit with Tiffany & Co who accused the online auction provider with allowing the sale of counterfeit Tiffany jewelry on its website. Tiffany’s allegations that eBay engaged in false advertising were rejected by U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan in Manhattan. It was the last remaining claim after a federal appeals court on April 1 dismissed the rest of Tiffany's trademark infringement case.

eBay and its Chinese counterpart Alibaba announced they will explore online partnerships that could help their users in China and the U.S., the heads of both companies said on Friday. During a forum sponsored by Alibaba, chief executives with both companies say they can achieve more by leveraging each others' advantages.

On Thursday a federal judge rehabilitate eBay Inc’s 28.4 percent stake in Craigslist, but allowed the classifieds site to keep eBay off its board. It was the case eBay filed in 2008 against the classifieds on allegations a rights plan Craigslist adopted diluted eBay's stake from 28.4 percent to 24.85 percent. The case brought by Craigslist in San Francisco against eBay is still to be litigated. The case alleges that eBay used its board seat at Craigslist to glean confidential information about the classified ad business.

Leading Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba.com unveiled its plans to acquire Vendio Services Inc as a first step in its move to further expand in the global market. Vendio Services, Inc. is an American Internet software as a service (SaaS) company that provides sales management software by subscription. A majority of customers use Vendio for its eBay auction management program and eBay applications.

Ranger Data Technologies and a group of 300 newspapers have joined under one roof to partner for the launch of a new online auction website that is meant to rival eBay and boost papers’ revenues. The website will be focused on local auctions.

John Donahoe, eBay CEO, told this week that its mobile application for Apple iPhone has been downloaded 10 million times which might bring $1.5 billion to $2 billion in transactions this year. Donahoe said that the iPhone app was responsible for $600 million in volume last year. "The digital wallet is going to be a way that will facilitate e-commerce growth," Donahoe said at the All Things Digital conference on Wednesday.

70 cybercrooks were arrested by Romanian police this week on the allegations they used compromised eBay profiles to defraud buyers on the online auction. After the cyber crooks obtained the login credentials of the legitimate users via phishing scam they used these trusted accounts to offer non-existent luxury goods. Buyers paid for the lots but never received these items.

Online marketplace company eBay has at last opened its local website for Russian users. The ecommerce giant has launched the system of international shopping eBay International Market (eIM). The company has translated not only the searching and lot interface into Russian, it also translated customer support and personal user area.

EBay has delayed the launch of Russian version of its online auction website. The launch date was moved from March 16th to 25th. The changed schedule is related to the visit of eBay director of business development Alina Prawdzik. The launch was timed to her arrival.

eBay announced that it is launching a new online retail platform in five European countries and Russia by the end of March which means that buyers will be able to make purchases in their own native language in those countries. eBay is seeking to boost transactions on its websites by making them more user friendly. Shoppers in Russia, Greece, the Czech Republic, Norway, Denmark and Sweden will now be able to buy online in their native tongues. Users in those states will also be offered PayPal payment system as an option to make transactions easier across the borders.