The website now called eBay was once called AuctionWeb. Pierre Omidyar is the founder of this site and was the chairman from 1998 to 2015, however, now, only owns five percent of it. In September of 1997, the name was changed from AuctionWeb to eBay; naming it after his consulting firm, Echo Bay Technology Group. At the time, the EchoBay.com URL was already taken, so he shortened the name to eBay.com. Now, Pierre Omidyar, a French-American billionaire, at the age of 54, has a net worth of a little over 25 billion dollars. Today, eBay has over 180 million users, and makes over 10 billion dollars a year.