Half.com was a fixed-price online marketplace for books, textbooks, music, movies, video games, and video game consoles. It was acquired by eBay in 2000 and shut down in 2017, with the domain redirected to the eBay website.
Half provided a platform where sellers could choose what price to sell their item for. A seller was able to see the average and most recent sale prices for any particular item to determine the selling price desired. A potential buyer could see available inventory for an item and choose their desired seller. This was a different model from eBay, which has buyers bid against one another. The pre-order feature allowed buyers to set a price and quality rating of a particular item they would like to buy. Sellers saw the pre-order listed when they put an item up for sale and could sell it to the buyer if they agreed with the buyer's price.
The company took a commission of every completed sale. The seller was responsible for shipping any item within three business days of a sale and paying the actual shipping costs.[2]
History
Half.com was founded in 1999 by American entrepreneur Josh Kopelman and Sunny Balijepalli. As an advertising gimmick, in December of the same year, the company paid the town of Halfway, Oregon US$100,000 and donated 20 new computers to change its name to "Half.com, Oregon" for a year.[3]