EBay Sold On Microsoft's AppsEBay Sold On Microsoft's Apps

EBay Inc. and Microsoft last week introduced code aimed at simplifying the exchange of information between eBay's auction pages and Microsoft's Office System desktop applications. The code, which came out of a joint-development agreement between the two companies, could let Microsoft apps play a bigger role in transactions between eBay buyers and sellers.

The code is available to the 4,000-member eBay development community and is designed to take advantage of XML Web-service capabilities built into the Office product line. EBay expects developers to use the code to design tools for things such as updating sellers' auction-item lists directly from within Excel or automating the movement of auction content from the eBay site to a seller's own site--a process that has required tedious cut-and-paste steps or custom code. The new code is "good for the eBay marketplace, because it means people are going to be able to interact with eBay more efficiently," says Jeffrey McManus, eBay's senior manager of developer relations.

Only the professional applications in the Office 2003 suite will be able to make use of the new code when eBay developers build it into software. Raj Kapoor, manager of information-worker products at Microsoft, says that should encourage eBay users to use Microsoft's newest desktop applications.

The new code will be a boost for the developers who sell software to companies that use eBay to sell goods, Delphi Group analyst Hadley Reynolds says. A company that uses Microsoft Excel 2003 to manage lists of unsold inventory on eBay may be looking to buy a tool that lets it automate the auction process with a click from the Excel toolbar. Says Reynolds: "Although we'd like to think everything in a big company is run on some sort of enterprise system, a lot of special projects like [eBay auctions] are run in Excel."