Rating: 
Summary: An epic journey from a dream to reality
Review: Upon finishing this book I was amazed at the detail Adam Cohen presented to readers about the real inside of eBay. The book travels through time playing on various aspects of the company and reasons to why it became and still is one of the world's most admired and successful companies. Sure, eBay has changed the marketplace as we know it and sure it has affected many lives. But the key element in this story is that one guy's vision of a community, free from obstructing walls, became a reality - something many .com companies failed to achieve. A wonderful read...highly recommended for all!
Rating: 
Summary: Informative insider look at a bumbling company
Review: Well, maybe not so perfect. The book itself is fine. What's not so perfect is all the bungling from Ebay's lauded executive team. Particularly by Meg Whitman, the CEO. This book describes the history of Ebay with surprising detail. The author had access to many people involved in that history, including the executives, and it shows. In fact, he was given access to Ebay's premises as kind of their official biographer. These accounts could only come from insiders. It shocks me that Whitman would allow her bungling to come out like this. I would assume she doesn't think she's bungling. Cohen has a lively and descriptive writing style. Hard to do with a book about corporate business, but he pulls it off nicely. In fact, there where many times I couldn't put it down. If you want to read the book to figure out why Ebay is so successful I think you may be disappointed. Except for Pierre Omidyar's vision for creating the thing in the first place ... and by the way, the story of him creating it so his girlfriend would have a market for her Pez collection was a fib created by Ebay's promotional person ... what drove the success of Ebay was its community. Every time Ebay's executives bungled, the community stepped in and raised holy heck. Whitman and her staff make poor decision after poor decision yet thanks to the community's outrage Ebay reconsiders and is usually guided onto the right path eventually. And when they're not bungling externally they're bungling internally. Remember that almost 2-day outage in '97? No backups or mirror system! They almost couldn't recover their data and might have had to start over again. Except for Omidyar, who dropped out of the everyday running of Ebay early on, the other executives seemed to be almost amatuerish in their lack of vision and planning. But it did make for an interesting story. The same way that a out-of-control fire is more interesting to watch than a well-oiled machine. I thought Ebay might not have stumbled into their success. I was wrong. The adage about first to market truly made the difference here. This book covers the whole sordid mess surprisingly well.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating account of one of the few successful dotcoms
Review: When Adam Cohen set out to chronicle of eBay, he probably did not realize that it would ultimately leave so many other dotcom businesses in its wake. This book is a thoroughly enjoyable account of all the quirky characters who built eBay into an empire, as well as a company that survived the dot-com bust. From the community of people who buy and sell on eBay -- and sometimes wind up getting married in the process -- to the site's enigmatic founder Pierre Obidymar, Cohen's book presents the story of a business that is not just successful but has upset all the traditional business models, became a highly fun place to work -- and extremely interesting to read about. I'd also recommend Andrea Orr's Meeting, Mating and Cheating --- for another fascinating account of a thriving Internet business. This book is about the Internet dating industry and how it has profited from loneliness and infidelity. Another fascinating read.
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