The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997, after Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar's consulting firm. The domain name echobay.com was already taken by a gold mining company,[12] so Omidyar shortened it to eBay.com.[13] In 1997 the company received $6.7 million in funding from the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.[14]