EBay (EBAY)

Other Items

Employees

As of December 31, 2009, eBay Inc. and its subsidiaries employed approximately 16,400 people (including temporary employees), approximately 9,700 of whom were located in the U.S.

Competition

We encounter vigorous competition in our businesses from numerous sources. For our Marketplaces segment, our users can find, buy, sell and pay for similar items through a variety of competing channels. These include, but are not limited to, online and offline retailers, distributors, liquidators, import and export companies, online and offline auctioneers, catalog and mail-order companies, classifieds, directories, search engines, products of search engines, virtually all online and offline commerce participants (consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business), online and offline shopping channels and networks. As our product offerings continue to broaden into new categories of items and new commerce formats, we expect to face additional competition from other online and offline channels for those new offerings. We compete on the basis of price, product selection, and services. Our growth rates in our most mature markets have significantly slowed and we are losing market share in some segments. For our Payments segment, our users may choose to pay through a variety of alternative means, including other online payment services, offline payment methods such as cash, check or money order, and traditional online or offline credit card merchant accounts. To compete effectively, we may need to expend significant resources in technology and marketing. These efforts may be expensive and could reduce our margins and have a materially adverse effect on our business, financial position, operating results and cash flows and reduce the trading price of our stock. Despite our efforts to preserve and expand the size and diversity of our users’ online community and enhance the user experience, we may not be able to continue to manage our operating expenses or increase or maintain our revenue to avoid or reduce a decline in our consolidated net income or avoid a net loss. For more information regarding these risks, see the information in “Item 1A: Risk Factors” under the caption “Our industry is intensely competitive, and other companies or governmental agencies may allege that our behavior is anti-competitive.”

12

Table of Contents

Seasonality

We expect transaction activity patterns on our websites to mirror general consumer buying patterns. Please see the information in “Item 7: Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” under the caption “Seasonality.”

Technology

Our Marketplaces and Payments platforms utilize a combination of proprietary technologies and services as well as technologies and services provided by others. We have developed intuitive user interfaces, customer tools and transaction processing, database and network applications that help enable our users to reliably and securely complete transactions on our sites. Our technology infrastructure simplifies the storage and processing of large amounts of data, eases the deployment and operation of large-scale global products and services and automates much of the administration of large-scale clusters of computers. Our infrastructure has been designed around industry-standard architectures to reduce downtime in the event of outages or catastrophic occurrences. We are continually improving our technology to enhance the customer experience and to increase efficiency, scalability and security. For information regarding technology related risks, see the information in “Item 1A: Risk Factors” under the captions “Our failure to cost-effectively manage certain aspects of our business could harm us,” and “System failures could harm our business.”

Intellectual Property

We regard the protection of our intellectual property as critical to our success. We have entered into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and contractors, and nondisclosure agreements with parties with whom we conduct business in order to limit access to and disclosure of our proprietary information.

We aggressively protect our intellectual property rights by relying on federal, state and common law rights, as well as a variety of administrative procedures. We actively pursue the registration of our trademarks, copyrights, patents and domain names in the U.S. and international jurisdictions. The expansion of our business has required us to protect our trademarks, patents and domain names in an increasing number of jurisdictions, a process that is expensive, may require litigation, and may not be successful in every location. We have registered our core brands as trademarks and domain names in the U.S. and a large number of other jurisdictions and have in place an active program to continue to secure trademarks and domain names that correspond to our brands in markets of interest. If we are unable to secure our trademarks or domain names, we could be adversely affected in any jurisdiction in which our trademarks or domain names are not registered.

Third parties have from time to time claimed, and others may claim in the future, that we have infringed their intellectual property rights. We currently are involved in several such legal proceedings. Please see the information in “Item 3: Legal Proceedings” and in “Item 1A: Risk Factors” under the captions “We are subject to patent litigation” and “We may be unable to protect or enforce our own intellectual property rights adequately.”

Segments and Geographic Information

For an analysis of financial information about our segments as well as our geographic areas, please see “Note 6 — Segments” to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Please see the information in “Item 1A: Risk Factors” under the caption “There are many risks associated with our international operations.”

Available Information

Our Internet address is www.ebay.com. Our investor relations website is located at http://investor.ebayinc.com. We make available free of charge on our investor relations website under the

13

Table of Contents

heading “SEC Filings” our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports as soon as reasonably practicable after such materials are electronically filed with (or furnished to) the SEC. Information contained on our websites is not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K.