ebay was down

FYI,
John


EBay Blacks Out for Three Hours


SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - A power outage at a Web hosting facility
caused a three-hour shutdown of the Web site of eBay, the online auction
company said Thursday.

The shutdown between 8:55 p.m. and 11:45 p.m. Wednesday was eBay's
first complete blackout in about two years and affected an unknown number of
bids, said company spokesman Kevin Pursglove.

The online giant handles about 7 million bids a day.

A roughly 10 minute-long power outage at a Qwest Communications
facility in Santa Clara, one of several computing plants eBay uses to run
its Web site, triggered the blackout. It forced eBay to reboot its systems,
a process that usually takes about two hours, Pursglove said.


The company plans to credit listing fees for affected sellers. Bids
that were scheduled to end at the time of the blackout have already been
extended 24 hours, Pursglove said.


Shares of eBay rose $2.24 to close Thursday at $112.60 on the Nasdaq
Stock Market.