The combination of large database and high-transaction volume make eBay’s web servers operation an important part of company’s success and potential contributor
to its failure. The servers at eBay failed more than 15 items during the first five years
of the company’s life . the worst series of failures kept the site offline for more than a day
a failures that cost eBay an estimated $5 millions .
the company’s stock fell 20 percent in the days following that failure.