EBay to Shut Its Half.com Operation

Auction giant EBay Inc. announced Thursday that it plans to close its Half.com Web site late next year, changing its approach to competing with rival Amazon.com Inc. in the growing category of used books, music, movies and other entertainment products.

Half.com founder Josh Kopelman also said he would leave the company, which has its headquarters in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., on April 15.

San Jose-based EBay, the Internet’s largest auction site, bought Half.com in 2000 in a stock transaction valued at nearly $214 million.

The deal, made after the dot-com bubble had burst, was a gamble by EBay to expand its business to include features offered by one of its biggest Internet peers, Amazon.

Half.com’s Web site resembles an online flea market where goods can be bought and sold at fixed prices.

Most of its users are small businesses and individuals looking to trade used or new books, CDs, movies and video games at half the list price.

EBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said Half.com’s site had become redundant to the parent company’s efforts, given the rise in entertainment-related sales that EBay had seen on its own site.

“The game plan has been to merge the two operations, so that buyers have one place to go, and so do sellers,” Pursglove said.

Indeed, EBay’s own site has begun to attract some of the same shoppers as Half.com, in part because the auction site added features such as fixed-price purchases.

Pursglove said EBay merchants sold $1.2 billion of entertainment products last year. Efforts to expand Half.com into other categories such as athletic gear and fine jewelry stalled.

Founded in 1999, Half.com gained fame in May 2000 when it persuaded officials in tiny Halfway, Ore., to change the town’s name to Half.com for one year.

Despite complaints from many residents who considered it a marketing gimmick, the city erected a sign:

“Welcome to Half.com, Oregon, America’s first dot-com city.”

A Halfway City Hall spokeswoman said Thursday that the town now is officially back to its original name, “thankfully.”

EBay officials said they expect to offer some Half.com employees, a small group mostly in the Philadelphia area, jobs in other parts of EBay, while others probably will be laid off with severance packages.

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Associated Press was used in compiling this report.