A perfect example in today’s world of a profitable non-profit is Mozilla, and they make no jokes about it. Today, in-conjunction with eBay, they revealed Mozilla Firefox eBay Edition, a companion and spin-off of Firefox built to provide eBay bidders and sellers with a focused tool giving them the best eBay experience. Around 50,000 people in America make their living solely off eBay, so no doubt the market is all ready and in place for the companion.
The eBay-edition companion gives you the best of both worlds. It’s a standalone executable that you can to install separately, or if you prefer, a super-addon for the regular Firefox — with a sidebar and various places of interaction – so you can have an eBay centric-experience without sacrificing anything. You can download it here (note: you need to be using Internet Explorer to download the stand-alone version).
The eBay-edition has three basic functions: to make you a better-bidder by keeping you always signed in and alerted when you’re outbid or your auction’s about to end, to keep you updated by providing an overview/glance at your eBay activities — buying or selling — and to make you a safe trader by letting you know when you’re on a spoofed eBay page.
eBay has been branching into a lot of new things lately (see Kijiji, their recent Web 2.0 play on Craigslist), and it’s really cool to see them leveraging the most out of new platforms, ideas, and ecosystems. The tool itself is going to prove invaluable to its members, and no doubt is an indication to expect more from eBay, Mozilla and perhaps others in the future.
