The Perfect Store: Inside eBay

Kara Swisher

. . . an invaluable tool to figuring out what it takes to create a solid and lasting company . . . .
— The Wall Street Journal

Publishers Weekly

This book's huge cast of supporting characters is considerably more interesting than its nominal stars, eBay's founders and senior management. To some extent that's unavoidable. How can anyone be more colorful than the Elvis aficionados and bubble-wrap entrepreneurs that inhabit eBay's virtual landscape? Yet readers may wish for a little more meat to the descriptions of those who built eBay into the leading online auction site. Cofounder Jeff Skoll and CEO Meg Whitman, MBAs from Stanford and Harvard, never come across as anything but one-dimensional. The most refreshing detail about Pierre Omidyar, eBay's other cofounder, is that before making his billions in the company's IPO he always knocked off work after eight hours. Unfortunately, with Omidyar the book descends into the usual hagiography of high-tech entrepreneurs. Cohen, a New York Times editorial board member and former technology reporter for Time, is much more evenhanded toward the hordes of eBay loyalists and more than a few detractors. Their zeal supports his claim that part of the company's market dominance is based on a sense of community. The company has carefully cultivated this perception, one of the book's most fascinating revelations. In the early days, staffers routinely sounded off on the site's bulletin boards using pseudonyms, even denying that they worked for eBay when asked. Cohen's quality of writing and research is above average for a high-tech tome. One wonders, however, if his insider access he claims to be the first journalist to be granted this at eBay makes him a little too nice to the principals. Agent, Kris Dahl. (June 5) Forecast: Expect brisk sales throughout eBay's vast customer base, as well as among students and observers of the Internet phenomenon. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

The brief but startling history of eBay; from Time's chief technology writer. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A journalist's admiring history of eBay, written with a dated enthusiam for the new economy. The Web site eBay is quite a phenomenon-the Internet's flea market cum chat room, where only a few clicks separate Rolex watches from Elvis Presley oven mitts. In addition to the thousand-odd people who work for eBay directly, the New York Times estimates that 75,000 people rely on the site for their livelihood. It is, claims founder Pierre Omidyar, the perfect market-a place where buyers and sellers meet without middlemen and where price fluctuates in concert with supply and demand. Cohen is inclined to agree, viewing Omidyar as a visionary and eBay as an exemplar of the new economy as he traces its evolution from an ad hoc garage-based Web site to a multi-billion-dollar corporation. Because the site began as a hobby, Omidyar designed it to be self-regulating so that, rather than officiate disputes, he created a system of feedback that made both parties dependent on strong reputations. In lieu of customer service, he created bulletin boards that allowed users to answer each other's questions. The result, claims Cohen, was an Internet community that saw the site both as trading post and social club. Powerful customer loyalty in its early days allowed eBay to win the dominant market position it now enjoys. Unfortunately for Cohen, however, the quirky start-up story covers only the first half of eBay's history. With an initial public offering that valued the company at $16 billion, eBay became a giant that kept users by buying out competitors rather than improving its own product-not exactly the stuff of a perfect market. But Cohen plugs on undeterred. Although he sees eBay as a philosophicallydriven experiment in economics, the latter half of The Perfect Store describes a thoroughly ordinary corporation, working to maximize profits and expand operations. An in-depth, if credulous, look at an Internet pioneer.