It's interesting looking at the reputation and practices of amazon and ebay over the past 20 years. Ebay started out with random individuals, and slowly became

It's interesting looking at the reputation and practices of amazon and ebay over the past 20 years. Ebay started out with random individuals, and slowly became more reputable as it attracted large sellers of knock-off brands. Amazon started out with decent brands, then slowly became less reputable as they picked up large sellers of knock-off brands. At this point, they occupy essentially the same space, despite starting off with completely different bases.