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Ebay is another interesting counterpoint to PG's essay. They are a company constantly made fun of in the tech community as monopolistic, unoriginal/innovative,
by replicatorblog 16y ago
Ebay is another interesting counterpoint to PG's essay. They are a company constantly made fun of in the tech community as monopolistic, unoriginal/innovative, without visionary guidance, but somehow they are more profitable than Amazon. Hackers are critical in many businesses, In Yahoo's case they need them to stay on top of changes to media, but if you can get significant network lock in like eBay then hackers may not be as important in the medium term. In the long term I think they'll face disruption in much the same way a company like AirBNB disrupted Craigslist which has a similar profile to eBay.
- rwmj 16y agoI have a suspicion that eBay are Altavista to some other company's Google. I don't know which company that will be, but surely it's possible to be 10 times better than eBay and overcome the network effects. (Plus I did some consulting for eBay and saw first hand how ineffective and stupid their management are)
- hga 16y agoeBay is the beneficiary of an intense network effect that Altavista and Google search never could be. Until the newer management, the Bain & Company mafia that e.g. don't understand or want the traditional eBay sellers, screw things up enough, it's likely to keep its position despite how horrible it is on so many levels. Check out Gunbroker.com for a pretty big auction site that indeed does things "10 times better"; it started up shortly after eBay wimped out and banned gun and gun accessory etc. sales, so it benefits from the same sort of network effects. Having used both, there's absolutely no comparison.