At the drop of a hammer

摘要

By several measures, eBay is one of the world's fastest-growing businesses. Profitable right from its creation in 1995, the company, based in San Jose, California, now dominates online auctions. Yet what eBay will become in another decade is impossible to predict, not least because some of the things now being traded on it have surprised even its own management. Used cars, for one thing, were thought to be unsuitable: who would want to buy, sight unseen, a secondhand car from a stranger in an internet auction? Yet this year eBay Motors is expected to sell more than $8 billion-worth of vehicles and parts, making it the company's most valuable category of business. Not long ago it was Beanie Babies.