eBay couldn't meaningfully do Groupon accounting because they do not beneficially possess the total transaction cost for any length of time. Paypal accounting gets incredibly complicated, but basically, if A agrees to buy B's widget on eBay for $100 with $10 of eBay fees, eBay gets the $10 from B's credit card and, a short period later, A pays B directly through a subsidiary which Very Carefully (TM) never puts the $100 on eBay's balance sheet or under their direct control. eBay doesn't call it revenue because eBay can't spend that money.
Groupon can spend that money.
There are many businesses which make active use of money that is owed to other people prior to actually paying it. Warren Buffets owns a lot of insurance companies. A huge portion of his investment operations are funded by float: basically, you have to pay him premiums and then he gives them back to you when (statistically speaking) your house burns down some years later. In the interim, it's his money, and if he manages float correctly it buys a company like e.g. Coca Cola on a continuous basis.
Or: take Bingo Card Creator as an example at the waaaaay opposite end of the scale. Many of my sales come through Google ads. It is basically economically equivalent to giving them 50% of the purchase price of 50% of my sales -- in fact, there is a Google pricing option which would make that exactly equivalent. However, crucially, I do not pay Google contemporaneously with the sale: like Groupon, our contractual arrangement means I pay them quite a bit later.
Ads placed on September 4th turn into sales on, statistically, September 5th which turns into money in my bank account on roughly September 7th. I get invoiced for the ads on approximately September 25th and then have until October 20th to pay my credit card prior to paying a penny of interest.
This means that I'm generally holding a couple of thousand of dollars of "Google's money" in my pockets at any given time. (It goes up and down depending on what time of the year this is. At the moment, it's a little under $1.5k off the top of my head.) Crucially, I can spend it. I'd have to replace it prior to summer (when the float tends to evaporate, due to how my market works), but if I want to replace a laptop or pay for a plane ticket for a couple months without having to pay credit card interest rates or dip into savings, I can take the money I was going to pay to Chase to pay Google in October, and then instead pay Chase in October with the money I was going to pay them in November, and then... you get the general picture.
money is just a money and logic can be twisted any way. This is why there is GAAP, and anytime somebody creatively twist their accounting beyond it there is train wreck like Enron, Merrill Lynch or Groupon.
>eBay doesn't call it revenue because eBay can't spend that money.
Groupon can spend that money.
There are many businesses which make active use of money that is owed to other people prior to actually paying it. Warren Buffets owns a lot of insurance companies. A huge portion of his investment operations are funded by float: basically, you have to pay him premiums and then he gives them back to you when (statistically speaking) your house burns down some years later. In the interim, it's his money, and if he manages float correctly it buys a company like e.g. Coca Cola on a continuous basis.
Or: take Bingo Card Creator as an example at the waaaaay opposite end of the scale. Many of my sales come through Google ads. It is basically economically equivalent to giving them 50% of the purchase price of 50% of my sales -- in fact, there is a Google pricing option which would make that exactly equivalent. However, crucially, I do not pay Google contemporaneously with the sale: like Groupon, our contractual arrangement means I pay them quite a bit later.
Ads placed on September 4th turn into sales on, statistically, September 5th which turns into money in my bank account on roughly September 7th. I get invoiced for the ads on approximately September 25th and then have until October 20th to pay my credit card prior to paying a penny of interest.
This means that I'm generally holding a couple of thousand of dollars of "Google's money" in my pockets at any given time. (It goes up and down depending on what time of the year this is. At the moment, it's a little under $1.5k off the top of my head.) Crucially, I can spend it. I'd have to replace it prior to summer (when the float tends to evaporate, due to how my market works), but if I want to replace a laptop or pay for a plane ticket for a couple months without having to pay credit card interest rates or dip into savings, I can take the money I was going to pay to Chase to pay Google in October, and then instead pay Chase in October with the money I was going to pay them in November, and then... you get the general picture.