Hot Topics:

PayPal’s Thompson Named Yahoo CEO

eBay's Donahoe to serve as interim leader of payments unit.

Former PayPal President Scott Thompson has left the company to become the new CEO of Yahoo, PayPal officials announced today.

Thompson will step into his new role at Yahoo on Monday. eBay President John Donahoe will serve as PayPal’s interim president while officials look for a permanent replacement, Donahoe notes in an email sent to PayPal employees.

In the email, Donahoe acknowledged that Thompson’s decision to leave PayPal was a “shock” to him, and that the news may have been a shock to others in the company as well. Still, he wished Thompson the best and told employees PayPal has “an enormous opportunity in front of it.”

“We will not miss a beat, and we will continue driving the incredible momentum that each of you has helped to create,” Donahoe notes in the email.

Thompson confirmed Tuesday that he accepted the position at Yahoo, saying that “despite his passion for PayPal, this was an opportunity he felt he had to take,” Donahoe adds.

Thompson became PayPal’s president in 2008. Before that, he was chief technology officer at the company, eBay reports.


One Comment

  1. Philip Cohen says:

    Oh, Scotty, what have you done! Obviously Scotty has seen the icebergs ahead and has decided to jump overboard before the rusting old tub hits. A smart move.

    “Study Sees PayPal Adoption Down Among Multi-Channel Merchants

    “Twenty-two percent of EPIS merchants who had accepted PayPal on their own websites and off-eBay stores in October 2010 stopped accepting PayPal as a payment method on those sites in October 2011.

    “There were 19% more merchants who accepted credit cards on their own websites and stores in October 2011 than in October 2010.”

    http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y11/m11/i21/s02

    And, Visa is to launch its new online payments gateway “V.me” this year. The idea is similar to that offered by PayPal: you upload details of your payment cards to Visa—even if they’re not Visa-branded—and Visa will process the payment—directly with your banker—without revealing your card details to the merchant; so the using of this “professional” system will reduce the risk of credit card fraud on online transactions on both payers and payees to virtually zero.

    Off-eBay online merchants will be able to free themselves from the most unprofessional, parasitic, unscrupulous and “clunky” PreyPal. And, undoubtedly, PreyPal will then atrophy back to it’s mandated use on the eBafia marketplace only, from whence, without its mandated use thereon, PreyPal would never have had the success that it has had. Unfortunately, there is no relief in sight for on-eBay merchants.

    But, be in no doubt that, except for its mandated use on whatever will be by then left of the Donahoe-atrophied eBay Marketplace, the clunky PreyPal will elsewhere be quickly buried by Visa’s professional online offering, “V.me”, once it is up and running this year. Thereafter, as eBay continues to sink lower and lower in the water, so will PreyPal.

    And, as for PreyPal’s projected move into EFTPOS at B&M. Pure science fiction—“Beam me up Scotty”.

    Then, there is that other little problem of corporate image: the eBafia and PreyPal have become the two most despised commercial entities on the planet, even more hated than “the banks”, and that has taken some doing.

    So, no more underpinning of eBay’s sagging bottom line by the clunky PreyPal. What is the “eBafia Don” to do now? Maybe, if Mittless Romney wins the GOP nomination we can hope that he will pick as his running mate his fellow “Pain from Bain”, the headless turkey, John Donahoe. Donahoe’s nearing the completion of his destruction of the eBay marketplace and so he should soon be looking for an even bigger challenge.

    So, apparently Scott Thompson is smarter than it appears after all; he would know the real situation at PreyPal and he undoubtedly recognises that the clunky PreyPal is on the cusp of commencing its journey down the gurgler, and he is jumping off the tired old SS “eBay” before it too goes submarine—that is, always assuming he was not pushed overboard as is often the case on the SS “eBafia”.

    Then, “According to eBay Inc. CEO John Donahoe, PayPal will become bigger than eBay as early as 2 years from now and is behind everything eBay does and every acquisition it makes.”

    Surprise, notwithstanding his obvious delusional mental state, eBay’s chief headless turkey has got that right: undoubtedly PreyPal will be bigger than eBay soon but it won’t be because PreyPal has gotten any more successful, just the opposite—Visa’s V.me will see to that; it will be because the eBay “house of cards” has finally imploded.

    And, who but a total idiot would invest in any PreyPal IPO now?

    Dream on “Turkey” John Donahoe …

    Who then will take charge of PreyPal? Only a fool would take charge of PreyPal now. But the real question is, when is the eBafia Don also going to abandon ship, or be thrown overboard by the owners of the ship when they finally wake up to the fact that all along they have had “Captain Queeg” at the tiller?

    Hang on, a fool is indeed taking over at PreyPal …

    “Ebay Boss John Donahoe To Serve PayPal’s Interim President”

    http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/paypal-announces-ebay-boss-john-donahoe-to-serve-interim-president/

    “PayPal claims PayPal Is Not a Payments Processor!”

    http://forums.auctionbytes.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=24148

    eBay / PayPal / Donahoe: Dead Men Walking.

    Reply

Leave a Comment