eBay, Microsoft in Web Services Agreement

Microsoft has entered a broad strategic agreement with online auctioneer eBay that will create benefits for both companies, without placing onerous restrictions on either. By partnering with Microsoft and agreeing to use Microsoft technologies for some of its services, eBay increases its reach with developers, businesses, and end-users, and eliminates Microsoft as a potential competitor in the online auction space. Meanwhile, Microsoft can now claim that one of the few successful (and profitable) e-commerce companies has adopted several of its most important next-generation technologies; the agreement also boosts Microsoft online services, particularly bCentral.

The agreement can be divided into two important components:

• eBay will make use of technologies that are important to Microsoft’s goal of creating .NET-based Web services, including both open standards (Extensible Markup Language [XML] and Simple Object Access Protocol [SOAP]) and Microsoft-owned technologies (Passport).
• Microsoft