I was chatting to a friend of mine about PG's "Ideas we'd like to fund" and we had an interesting debate about online auctions. At the moment, ebay has a near monopoly and my friend doesn't think this will change any time soon. I disagree. There are countless examples of start-ups disrupting existing monopolies.<p>Many people try to out-ebay ebay, and I think this is their mistake. There's not much wrong with ebay from a buyer's point of view. Yes it has it's flaws but not enough to convince buyers to leave en masse.<p>The seller's experience on the other hand is drastically different. The web is littered with complaints from sellers yet they continue to sell on ebay because that's where the buyers are. All the ebay competitors that have come and gone over the years have focused on tempting the seller away (usually with lower fees) but I think that's the wrong approach. Competitors should concentrate on winning over the buyers and the seller's will follow, but as I mentioned earlier, while there are no major issues with the buying experience, buyers will stick with ebay. I think this is what's behind ebay's recent spate of policy changes all designed to keep the buyer happy, regardless of the cost or inconvenience to the seller.<p>What are people's thoughts on this? Does ebay have an Achilles heel?
I think most of the features are irrelevant- you need to find some way to break the "network effect" (large number of buyers attract sellers, large number of sellers attract buyers) like Craigslist did.<p>A cautionary point is your idea also has to something that is not true for Amazon (else Amazon would have already crushed eBay). From what I have seen a big blocker is the rigidity of Amazon's catalogue versus eBays. For example an eBay seller selling obscure components to repair fishing reels doesn't need variable pricing and would be happier using Amazon for the payments (versus PayPall)- but has no idea how you would enter these unique items into Amazon.