What’s next for eBay?

As part of Fortune’s annual Fifty Most Powerful Women edition, the magazine provides a nice state of the state piece on Meg Whitman and eBay entitled Building eBay 2.0. The article talks about eBay’s struggles despite expected 2006 operating margins of 33%. Unbeknownst to me, Meg Whitman joined eBay in 1998 when it only had 30 employees and has grown the organization to 13,000.

Of course, no tech article would be complete without mention of Google. Google and eBay’s mercurial relationship, is a perfect example of “coop-etition.” eBay buys a ton of advertising from Google, yet faces competition in the form of Google checkout (vs. eBay’s PayPal) and Google Talk (vs. eBay’s Skype).

In the short term, eBay seems to be seeking growth by acquisition such as its purchase of PayPal and Skype. In addition to these acquisitions, eBay has also purchased Shopping.com and Rent.com and is rumored to be looking at buying StubHub.com.

SO WHAT? The so what of this article is that Ms. Whitman has done a phenomenal job of taking the company from start up to established industry leader. She has always said she would leave after 8-10 years, which is about now. Therefore, one can’t help but wonder if investors will give her the needed time to move the company into its next phase of growth or will they force her to pursue her own stated goal of departing after 10 years. Only time will tell.

Tags: eBay, web2.0, Google, Stubhub

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