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I thought the guy built it for his wife to sell pez dispensers? I seem to remember hearing that 20 years ago.
The reality is always much messier, more diffuse, and too much of a long story.
PayPal is on a somewhat similar trajectory.
The lesson here is to keep your customers happy or someone else will.
Also found it interesting to read about the people and companies who thought eBay wouldn't work for various - good - reasons. You can always make something work!
eBay is a fascinating story for their early impact to the commercial internet. It is also fascinating to see how they've fared: it is still around but now it is being eaten up by competitors like Facebook Marketplace in the US, MercadoLibre in Latin America and others. PayPal is on a somewhat similar trajectory. The lesson here is to keep your customers happy or someone else will. Also found it interesting to read ab…
Then you have Amazon on the B2C side.
And Aliexpress doing their damage on the low-margin direct-from-Asia side.
It’s funny how Amazon feared eBay, and then failed to beat them — in 1999. But when I worked at eBay in 2003, they had the mailroom put a sticker on every amazon box that said “Next time get it on eBay!” And now the tide is swinging back a bit as people get fed up with fakes and commingling at Amazon. At least with eBay you know the product you’re getting is actually from the seller you bought it from.
you mean when eBay employees received a package from Amazon at the office?
It’s funny how Amazon feared eBay, and then failed to beat them — in 1999. But when I worked at eBay in 2003, they had the mailroom put a sticker on every amazon box that said “Next time get it on eBay!” And now the tide is swinging back a bit as people get fed up with fakes and commingling at Amazon. At least with eBay you know the product you’re getting is actually from the seller you bought it from.
Wait, how is this different with eBay compared to Amazon?
It’s funny how Amazon feared eBay, and then failed to beat them — in 1999. But when I worked at eBay in 2003, they had the mailroom put a sticker on every amazon box that said “Next time get it on eBay!” And now the tide is swinging back a bit as people get fed up with fakes and commingling at Amazon. At least with eBay you know the product you’re getting is actually from the seller you bought it from.
At least with eBay you know the product you’re getting is actually from the seller you bought it from. Wait, how is this different with eBay compared to Amazon?
Amazon's checkout process is 99.99% in the Amazon context, only showing a "sold by" on the order page itself in a 12px font. There is no mention of the seller at all in Amazon's order notification emails.
It’s funny how Amazon feared eBay, and then failed to beat them — in 1999. But when I worked at eBay in 2003, they had the mailroom put a sticker on every amazon box that said “Next time get it on eBay!” And now the tide is swinging back a bit as people get fed up with fakes and commingling at Amazon. At least with eBay you know the product you’re getting is actually from the seller you bought it from.
> they had the mailroom put a sticker on every amazon box you mean when eBay employees received a package from Amazon at the office?
It’s funny how Amazon feared eBay, and then failed to beat them — in 1999. But when I worked at eBay in 2003, they had the mailroom put a sticker on every amazon box that said “Next time get it on eBay!” And now the tide is swinging back a bit as people get fed up with fakes and commingling at Amazon. At least with eBay you know the product you’re getting is actually from the seller you bought it from.
At least with eBay you know the product you’re getting is actually from the seller you bought it from. Wait, how is this different with eBay compared to Amazon?
So if two sellers are selling the same item, with the same exact SKU, and both send their inventory to Amazon to be warehoused and shipped, Amazon will happily send you either seller's item, depending on which is more convenient to send. (Perhaps seller A's stuff is in a warehouse closer to you.) This sounds good in theory, because all those products are identical, right? What if seller B's products are all counterfeit? So you buy from seller A who you think is legit (and for the example is), but you get seller B's fake crap, and seller A was powerless to stop it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least with eBay you know the product you’re getting is actually from the seller you bought it from. Wait, how is this different with eBay compared to Amazon?
On Amazon, you don't know which seller's goods are being shipped to you, if it's "fulfilled by Amazon" or from Amazon directly. So if two sellers are selling the same item, with the same exact SKU, and both send their inventory to Amazon to be warehoused and shipped, Amazon will happily send you either seller's item, depending on which is more convenient to send. (Perhaps seller A's stuff is in a warehouse closer to…
I thought the guy built it for his wife to sell pez dispensers? I seem to remember hearing that 20 years ago.
I was a tiny tiny competitor to eBay some 20 years ago and the pez story was pure BS. The reality is that eBay (that is AuctionWeb) got its initial traction from spamming Usenet as the story correctly states. Very quickly they moved from spamming themselves to letting their users spam Usenet. This is the "growth hacking" model still followed today by many. The question is there any moral middle ground? If you can sea…