3 . What is eBay? The simple answer is that it is a global trading platform (贸易平台) where nearly anyone can trade practically anything. People can sell and buy all kinds of products and goods, including cars, movies and DVDs, sporting goods, travel tickets, musical instruments, clothes and shoes—the list goes on and on.

The idea came from Peter Omidyar, who was born in Paris and moved to Washington when he was still a child. At high school, he became very interested in computer programming and after graduating from Tufts University in 1988, he worked for the next few years as a computer engineer. In his free time he started eBay as a kind of hobby, at first offering the service free by word of mouth. By 1996 there was so much traffic on the website that he had to upgrade (升级) and he began charging a fee to members. Joined by a friend, Peter Skill, and in 1998 by his capable CEO, Meg Whitman, he has never looked back. eBay has gone from strength to strength. It is now one of the ten most visited online shopping websites on the Internet.

eBay sells connections, not goods, putting buyer and seller into contact with each other. All you have to do is make an e-photo, write a description, fill out a sales form and you are in business: the world is your market place. Of course for each item sold eBay gets a percentage and that is great deal of money. Every day there are more than sixteen million items listed on eBay and eighty percent of the items are sold.