The PayPal Wars

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth (ISBN 0-9746701-0-3) is a book by former PayPal marketing employee Eric M. Jackson that was published in 2004 by World Ahead Publishing.ISBN 0-9746701-0-3 Today PayPal has over 100 million users and in 2005 PayPal processed over $27 billion in payments.[1] Its alumni have gone on to start companies like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Yelp. [2] The PayPal Wars provides an insider's perspective into the people and events that helped create this company and ultimately lead to its acquisition by eBay in 2002. The book recounts PayPal's many clashes with lawyers, regulators, and the Mafia. [3] It also provides background information on PayPal's current battle with the Google Checkout payments system from search engine company Google. [4]

The PayPal Wars has received awards and acclaim for its writing style and personal narrative. It won the Writers Notes Book Awards as the best business book of the year [5] and it was the runner-up in the USA Book News “Best Books 2004” Awards for business.[6] The Washington Times said the book is "an absorbing insider's story." [7] Reason Magazine said that it "reads like a spy novel." [8] Tech Central Station said that "It's rare that a business book is a page turner, but The PayPal Wars is." [9] Tom Peters said The PayPal Wars "gives the best description of 'business strategy' unfolding in a world changing at warp speed" [10].

[edit] Criticism

Early employees of PayPal have criticized the book in that it only explains events from Mr. Jackson's limited point of view. Despite his claims, Jackson was not an executive but rather a regular employee in PayPal's marketing department. As such he did not participate in many of the upper-level management activities such as board meetings that he writes about. Due to his limited access to such events, Jackson's perspective on the history of the company is somewhat superficial. Additionally, given Jackson's position inside the marketing department, he fails to give a proper account of important events that occurred in PayPal's engineering department.