von “To all the members [of] the Magento family: we thank you for all the passion, expertise and hard work that you’ve invested in Magento”. This address is taken from the official statement regarding eBay’s recent acquisition of Magento, and it does not take too much imagination to recognise: this is a farewell.
Let’s recapitulate: In a little more than three years since the release of the first productive version of Magento, the founders of Magento, Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner have a build a product, a company and a following in a way that was and still is nothing short of a stroke of genius. Starting out when the Open-Source-E-Commerce world was dominated by code dinosaurs such as osCommerce, Magento’s concept was a fresh breeze and created excitement all over the world. About a year ago, they have sold 49% of their company to eBay for about USD 22 Mio, the details of the recent take-over are undisclosed – but I’m sure we are not talking about petty change here either.
This deal – or, too be more precise, its announcement – is perfectly timed. For one, having finally reached important milestones such as education, the Magento Go SaaS initiative as well as a European presence, Magento is a most attractive marriage partner. Secondly, with the Magento Developer’s Paradise in full gear – which arguably is the most important developer event of the Magento year- Magento sends out an important message: Magento carries on. In the shape and form of Magento 2, a complete refactoring of the current Magento platform, the core developers address the most urgent problems of developers around the world.
Undoubtedly, Magento’s community is a very important and valuable asset, and it would be very foolish for eBay to throw it away. Likewise, Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner are an integral part of the Magento family, and it would be equally foolish of eBay to introduce the world to a new Magento dynamic duo.
Yet, today’s announcement marks the end of an era – eBay is now in full control of how Magento will carry on. eBay has recently invested in a couple of companies, aiming at supporting their core business with a new eCommerce initiative. Most notably, eBay is now in possession of GSI Commerce, which is yet another eCommerce platform and has shares in Intershop, a large German eCommerce platform. In other words: eBay now has various eCommerce-related technological advancements at its disposal, and it remains to be seen how they form a coherent strategy out of these puzzle-pieces.
As harsh as it sounds: Magento will be one of these puzzle-pieces. We hear about something called X.Commerce, an open platform that eBay would like to endorse and develop and use Magento as its core technology. What this platform will look like also remains to be seen
(Image: pexels.com)
7 Antworten auf eBay takes over Magento: The end of an era
- Vinai sagt: 06.06.11 um 21:41 An end of an era and a beginning of… what?
Lets wait and see what licence Magento 2 is released under, that will be incredibly important. - Roy Rubin sagt: 07.06.11 um 03:02 Your post begins by quoting from the announcement on our blog: “To all the members the Magento family: we thank you for all the passion, expertise and hard work that you’ve invested in Magento.” Taken by itself, I understand how that line might sound like a farewell, as you characterize it in your post..In fact, it is anything but a farewell. The headline directly over the quoted line is “Creating the future together.” And that very paragraph – after thanking the community – goes on to talk about the promise of the “innovative and open” future that we look forward to creating with the wonderful Magento community.Farewell? Hardly. As I said to our employees today, “this achievement we celebrate today is amazing; the opportunity ahead of us is even greater.”We plan to pursue this opportunity with as much passion and conviction to continue building innovative and disruptive open source solutions.
- Canio sagt: 07.06.11 um 14:59 Well, I hope that no member of the ebay coding team will be trying to mess with the magento core. I know by experience that the ebay code is not really state of the art. The api is often very confusing.Nevertheless I’m very excited, I (want to) believe in the future of magento.
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- Nudge sagt: 09.06.11 um 11:30 Alike Magento Go, X.Commerce will move Magento a step apart from your LAMP server to the cloud. I hope that the community aspect, which is a great strength of the product, will continue to be part of the future ecosystem.
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