Once in a great while, you see companies making truly great moves. It happens when they extend their brand outside what is normally accepted to try to grab a foothold on a market, establish more users or customers in a particular area, or to make things easier and more efficient for their users.
The eBay Edition of Firefox is one of those few times.
eBay understands that the future of technology is through a browser. In fact, a lot of people understand that. Why do you think Google is on a mission to dismount Microsoft in the Office space? But eBay took a more direct approach.
Rather than pay some obscene amount of money for a special Internet Explorer edition, even though it is more widely used - they simply altered the source code in Firefox (which basically amounts to a preinstalled toolbar). Keep in mind, this is very soon after the Stumbleupon acquisition.
There is a lot of talk about the eBay browser circulating through the Internet, but it really comes down to two things:
- Branding - extending eBay’s reach outside of their website to encompass the whole Internet
- Efficiency - making it easier for customers to use their services
eBay extending its brand through a web browser might be the key it needs to extend its services that much farther. It is a game changing, mega business; but there are always more customers in spaces that you would have never though possible.
Plus, the major disconnect of customer and ebay.com is the fact the life gets in the way. There might be something that someone wants to buy but they are at work or on vacation or away from home at the time. Then, unless the seller has multiple items, they are out of luck. Extending that functionality through a browser or the already established Stumbleupon toolbar will make that disconnect even more transparent (I love that word - it means non-existent or able to be seen through..).
The two major points that entrepreneurs can take away from this is - brand your product or service, and make it as easy as possible to be accessible. I am not talking about sitting by the phone 24 hours a day, but have systems in place that allow you to always be selling services and products. Hence, have a dynamic web site!