EBay (EBAY)

Our decision to launch our PayPal Developer Platform, which is open to third-party developers, subjects us to new risks.

In 2009, we launched the PayPal Developer Platform to enable third party developers to access a wide variety of PayPal product and programming code specifications and to connect to select PayPal payment application programming interfaces (APIs). We also began providing a software tool kit for building mobile payments applications. In addition, we provide third party developers with access to certain APIs with respect to our Marketplaces platforms. There is no assurance that third-party developers will develop and maintain applications and services on PayPal’s platforms on a timely basis or at all, and a number of factors could cause such third-party developers to curtail or stop development for our platforms. For instance, if we develop our own software applications and services, such development may negatively affect the decisions of third-party developers to develop, maintain, and upgrade similar or competitive applications on our platforms. The availability and development of these applications also depend on developers’ perceptions and analysis of the relative benefits of developing software for our products versus our competitors’ products, including devices that use competing platforms. If developers focus their efforts on these competing platforms, the availability and quality of applications for our products may suffer. In addition, we may potentially become subject to additional regulatory scrutiny based on applications developed by third-party developers.

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Our businesses depend on continued and unimpeded access to the Internet. Internet service providers may be able to block, degrade, or charge us or our users additional fees for our offerings.

Our customers rely on access to the Internet to use our products and services. In many cases that access is provided by companies that compete with at least some of our offerings, including incumbent telephone companies, cable companies, mobile communications companies, and large Internet service providers. Some of these providers have stated that they may take measures that could degrade, disrupt, or increase the cost of customers’ use of our offerings by restricting or prohibiting the use of their infrastructure to support or facilitate our offerings, or by charging increased fees to us or our users to provide our offerings. In addition, Internet service providers could attempt to charge us each time our customers use our offerings. Worldwide, a number of companies have announced plans to take such actions or are selling products designed to facilitate such actions. Interference with our offerings or higher charges for access to our offerings, whether paid by us or by our customers, could cause us to lose existing customers, impair our ability to attract new customers, and harm our revenue and growth.