Pierre Omidyar's first foray into e-commerce began less as a business venture than as an experiment. In 1995, curious about the effects of information technology on markets, Omidyar spent a long September weekend writing software for a new kind of online trading platform. He launched the software as part of his personal web page, and the first item sold was a broken laser pointer. After that, things started to get interesting. Today eBay, the company that grew out of Omidyar's experiment, is a global online marketplace where practically anyone can trade practically anything. In 1996, its first year of operation under the eBay brand ... To read this entire article you must be a MultiLingual subscriber. For immediate access to the current issue, subscribe to the digital version. Already a subscriber?

Above excerpt taken from the January/February 2009 issue of MultiLingual published by MultiLingual Computing, Inc., 319 North First Avenue, Suite 2, Sandpoint, Idaho 83864-1495 USA, 208-263-8178, Fax: 208-263-6310. Subscribe