Screaming Penguin

It appears its true, eBay is switching to Java, based on the linked JavaLobby article that has excerpts from eBay statements and Sun testimonials. Maybe everyone except for myself already knows this? eBay is a Microsoft shop right now, always has been. eBay also has a COMPLETELY HORRIBLE website right now, and always has (not the fault of Microsoft). They make more money than God of course, so the site does what it has to do, but I dont think there should be any argument that the site is terribly clumsy. The UI is horrible and technically the site leaves MANY MANY things to be desired. Also a longstanding joke is that its currently all written in a single DLL file, eBayISAPI.dll (its a joke). So if they go Java the whole "who has the damn DLL checked out" thing might be over? eBay was purported to be moving full steam ahead into .NET territory, but has apparently reversed that decision. ----------------------------------------- "eBay's evaluation of Microsoft's .NET initiative concluded that, at the time, it was not ready to meet its needs.....But, as we dug into the different issues, we reached the realization that we needed a more OPEN ARCHITECTURE accompanied with overarching process changes. This paradigm was integral to our decision to go with Java technology." ------------------------------------------ The migration to a Java based architecture is of course a HUGE undertaking at eBay but apparently its been well underway for some time and they plan to have everything migrated over by mid 2004. This likely could be the biggest java webapp EVER. Think about the volume at eBay, this thing better scale huh? I think this is good news, basically anything will be an improvement at eBay and I happen to personally be a big Java advocate (and have serious personal reservations about Microsoft, mainly due to firsthand experiences and security issues). For more see the linked JavaLobby and Sun articles.   eBay architects J2EE to do 1 BILLION page views a day: JavaLobby