Word: named
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...setting the price of goods of indeterminate value. (Some of the earliest ones were held by Roman soldiers selling off battle loot.) Auctions make more sense for items whose worth is uncertain (an antique chair or a used forklift) than for commonly sold goods (a new pair of name-brand blue jeans...
Omidyar wrote some code and over Labor Day weekend of 1995 launched what he called AuctionWeb, which was supported on the $30-a-month Internet service provider he was hooked up to from home. (The site's domain name was www.ebay.com and eBay was the name that stuck.) There were no Pez dispensers--that came later--but there were listings for a whole lot of computer hardware. eBay started out free, but it quickly attracted so much traffic that Omidyar's Internet service upped his monthly bill to $250. Now that it was costing him real money, Omidyar decided...
Moreover, eBay has exposed America as a nation of collectors. Matchbook covers, cast-iron witches' cauldrons, Pez dispensers, pneumatic grease pumps from the 1920s, Three Stooges memorabilia--you name it, some American somewhere collects it. "We define ourselves by our stuff," says Robert Thompson, president of the Popular Culture Association and a Syracuse University professor who specializes in the study of collectibles. In a democracy, with everyone theoretically equal, people want to be different. We don't have a caste system; we've never had a blood-line aristocracy. We've distinguished ourselves by our cars, by the clothes...
...every webhead is working against the established grocers. Priceline.com the site that lets you name your price for airline tickets, is doing the same for groceries in Manhattan and Philadelphia; it expects to go national by next May. The catch: you still have to push a squeaky wheel around terrazzo flooring and pick up the items yourself. Savings kick in only at the register...
Indeed, supermarkets are fighting back with their own Net groceries that emphasize name-brand trustworthiness. Take Maine-based Hannaford Bros., which owns Shop 'n' Save stores across the Eastern U.S. Hannaford set up HomeRuns.com which has upped the ante by offering a double-your-money satisfaction guarantee. It's already doing brisk business in the Boston area. That's no mean feat. Boston is a nasty little incubator of Web grocers and boasts four firms in cutthroat competition; one company, Streamline, will pay to install a fridge in your garage, allowing the Web store to make unattended deliveries...