Global eBay has officially declared the establishment of eBay Israel and unveiled its activity in the country.

The online retail giant has decided to unite its two activity centers in Netanya and Tel Aviv into one development center and significantly expand it.

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The company plans to recruit dozens of new workers, mostly computer engineers, industrial and management engineers and information system engineers, turning eBay's center of activity in Israel into one of its only technology centers in the world.

Apart from five development centers in the United States, the company has one center in India and one in China.

eBay Israel will be headed by Yuval Matalon, who manages the company's activity in the Holy Land.

The main activity of the united development center will continue to take place in Netanya and partly in Tel Aviv, but the company is looking for a new complex for the entire activity.

The Israeli development center will focus on building catalogues, creating information on products and developing tools for social commerce, aimed at allowing collective purchases and sharing the buying process with other users.

The company's entry into the catalogue field and their integration in its websites were made possible after it acquired Israeli company Shopping.com, which engages in price comparison on the Internet and specializes in building catalogues.

Last year eBay also bought Israeli startup The Gifts Project, which developed an application for online group gifting.

Center of gravity shifted

When it first entered Israel, eBay divided its activity between the operation of Netanya-based Shopping.com as an independent company and the use of the Israeli company's expertise by global eBay's digital markets service.

Over time, the activity's center of gravity was shifted to the development of eBay's technological infrastructure, while Shopping.com continues its business activity in the field of price comparison.

Now, following the acquisition of Tel Aviv-based The Gifts Project, eBay employs more than 200 workers in Israel. The company decided recently to step up its activity in Israel and is preparing to recruit dozens of workers.

According to eBay representatives in Israel, the company's activity in the country is also aimed at monitoring the development of the Israeli online retail market and investing specifically in eBay's Israeli customers.

Another Israeli company acquired by eBay is Fraud Sciences, which specializes in developing tools for securing online payments.

eBay operates the world's biggest and most popular online retail website, with more than 100 million users, and tops the list of high-tech and Internet corporations.

The company, which was founded in 1995 in San Jose, California, as the operator of an auction website, recorded a significant growth in recent years and is now valued at some $68 billion.

The company's total income in the last quarter of 2011 amounted to $11.6 billion – a 35% increase compared to the previous year.

Apart from the eBay Marketplace online auction website, eBay Inc. also includes global e-commerce business PayPal, GSI Commerce, which provides e-commerce solutions and services, and open source based e-commerce Web application Magento.