Rating: 
Summary: Nothing new here
Review: If you've read news stories about ebay, you know what is in this book. It mentions key members of ebay's corporate world, but really gives no insight into the heart and soul of the company. Yes, it will be a fast read if you skip all the boring stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing. Don't bother.
Review: I must spend half my life on eBay, so I was looking forward to this "inside story." What I found instead was an artifically bouncy stringing together of old news stories and an author racing to get his book out quickly to capture all of the interest in the online auction house to which so many Americans, including this one, are addicted.
Also, I sometimes got the flavor of a reporter getting a little too cozy with the individuals he was profiling as I read some of his descriptions of the people behind eBay. To the extent Cohen got inside access to The Perfect Store, it seems it was at a price.
Rating: 
Summary: great summer read!
Review: As a non-eBay user, I quite unexpectedly couldn't put down this page-turning account of the rise of eBay. Beautifully written, this book mixes the engaging story of the founder's original vision with the colorful stories of the many folks who fueled it by buying and selling their wares on eBay, and by keeping the company true to its vision, while other internet businesses failed . While telling the story of one company, Cohen tells us much about ourselves, and reveals what we as a society are missing (and looking for on eBay) -- and it's not just collectibles. Much more interesting than a "business" book, and certainly more fun.
Rating:
Summary: A waste of time
Review: The world doesn't need another book on the overrated website ebay.com. This book is a dull read and includes nothing new. The author regurgitated old news articles from time, newsweek and the tv.
Rating:
Summary: A perfect summer read!
Review: What a marvelous book! Fast-paced, absorbing, replete with fascinating characters. If you want an insider's view of the Internet's most fascinating company, buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: Simply a corporate history
Review: I expected an interesting insight into ebay from this book, and got dry history. I would have enjoyed more positive discussion of the site and the community. I'm glad I bought a used copy and didn't pay full retail.
Rating:
Summary: The how and why of a terrific idea
Review: The legend of Internet auction site eBay's birth is irresistible: a smart young guy starts it so that his girlfriend, who collects PEZ dispensers, can find more. Pam Wesley, Pierre Omidyar's fiancée, did want more PEZ dispensers in 1997, but in fact this creation myth was dreamed up by AuctionWeb's (later eBay's) Mary Lou Song, who pitched it to Omidyar, reasoning later that "No one wants to hear about a thirty-year-old genius who wanted to create a perfect market." The boyfriend, Pierre Omidyar, was born in Paris in 1967, and moved to the US as a six-year-old. He grew up in Washington, DC in a home that prized brain power and education. (His father's a medical doctor, and his mother has a doctorate in linguistics.) He loved computers early on, and snuck out of PE in order to tinker with his science teacher's cheap Radio Shack computer in a school closet, eventually teaching himself to program in BASIC. But this was no asocial loner/misfit writing code in a closet. Author Adam Cohen draws a portrait of the young Omidyar as a dyed-in-the-wool humanist and idealist, a brilliant programmer who was also a sociable and thoughtful young man who fully believed that cyberspace ought to be about people and community. Cohen asserts that Omidyar "wanted his corner of cyberspace to be a place where people made real connections with each other, and where a social contract prevailed." Quite deliberately, and with no goal toward making its founder a gazillionaire, Omidyar's idea created, after plenty of tinkering, eBay: "a perfect marketplace." Along the way there are evolving business plans, bright and devoted employees, and a consistent and profitable fiscal (though not cultural) conservatism. According to Cohen, eBay's leaders have been very good at recognizing a poor plan and rejecting it. The feedback practices that eBay pioneered - and so many have adopted - are fully described. There's an IPO, and the swelling and the bursting of the dot com bubble. Cohen is careful to contrast eBay with other big dot coms (Amazon most visibly) whose leaders have been seduced by schemes, nearly all of them involving overinvestment in new and unproven online companies, that consistently failed after bleeding millions of investor dollars. Issues of ethics, legality, fraud, plus the inevitable technological challenges of a fast-growing online site are intelligently and colorfully discussed, too. The vast stuff of eBay is in here, too: knickknacks, new and used clothing, cars, furniture, pornography, antiques, books, Barbies and Beanie Bags, art and things you might not have ever thought existed. There are profiles of real characters - told compassionately and well. Cohen has a sense of humor, but he doesn't laugh at people - no matter how unconventional their practices and proclivities. Cohen discusses the comparatively new psychological disorder of cyber addiction. Ebay took an interest in this, and sponsored a forum for users. People wrote to eBay's Mary Lou Song with their stories. One wrote," I love it when I hear my boyfriend snore, because that means he's deeply asleep and I can go downstairs and turn the computer back on." Clinical psychologists treat Internet addiction, and eBay is often - though by no means always - the drug of choice. The editing of this book could have stood some improvement. I wished for chapter headings more colorful than "Chapter One," "Chapter Two," and photographs would have been a nice plus. The eBay story deserves at least a few good graphics. Some of the book's organization is spotty, too: Chapter Ten is a hodge-podge that would probably defy naming. This is a full and affectionate story about one of our more interesting companies, the fruits of idealism, and (not coincidentally) some great ideas combined with smart business practices. Ebay really IS a community as well as a corporation - and Cohen makes that wonderfully clear. Although the subtitle is "Inside eBay," in fact the story begins in Omidyar's adolescence and concludes in 1999, when Omidyar leaves eBay to move to Paris with his wife (of the PEZ myth) and their baby. Cohen likes these people, and I did, too. I came away with a full understanding of what Cohen means by "the perfect store," and feeling that I'd gotten to know some of the visionary people and the sort of sociable optimism, brainy hard work and creative thinking responsible for eBay's beginnings and its continuing success.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Inside Look at Internet Success Story
Review: What a ride! Adam Cohen's breezy, thoughtful, entertaining account of eBay's stratospheric rise from humble beginnings to Internet star captivated me from start to finish. Cohen's unprecedented inside access is a reader's and reporter's dream. You'll come away with a richer understanding of both eBay and the world that gave rise to it--the quirky, vibrant, intriguing place where all of us live and work.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit disjointed -but informative!
Review: If you are looking for a lot of information about ebay in one place, this is pretty good. I agree with a previous poster who said that it was a bit disjointed. For example, the complete story of the Christian woman who came to work at ebay under humble circumstances, and then was promoted to head of the eBay foundation takes about 3-4 pages, but it's spread out over 2/3 of the book. There are many stories that are interwoven piecemeal through the book that it takes away from the sense of chronological progression of the story.
This book definitely has a neutral to positive spin. If you're looking for ebay bashing this isn't it.
Rating:
Summary: a triumph
Review: As sexy as the story of eBay's success is, so is the story of how it almost failed, on numerous occasions at that. Cohen's book is both astute and honest in its rendering of an Internet leviathan's near drowning. One of the best dot.com books I've read and trust me, there are plenty of them.
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