[Sigia-l] is bad design a choice?

[Listera]

Skot Nelson:

> "design" when used without some form of adjective or noun to modify
> it, implies "visual design" or "graphic design" if you prefer.

Dang, I missed that memo again. On what planet's constitution is this
written?
  
> eBay is not a monopoly

A company that has 150 million users and close to 75% market share in the
consumer-to-consumer auction space and dwarfs its next competitor (or all of
them combined, for that matter) *is* a monopoly:

"eBay is a pure play on the global growth of Internet adoption and
e-commerce, and is the Internet e-commerce company most insolated from
competition, in our view," Merrill said. "In most countries eBay does not
have to compensate for supplier power (eBay's auction sellers have few
comparable alternatives), customer power (eBay's selection is unparalleled)
and competition [Yahoo! and Amazon.com haven't been able to overcome first
mover advantage]." The research firm forecasts 2,014 online auction GMV
[gross merchandise volume] at $240 billion, which would comprise 4% of total
global retail commerce. "EBay is the auction industry leader with vast
market opportunity," Merrill said. "We think eBay is well positioned to
capture 75% market share."

<http://www.forbes.com/home/markets/2005/01/25/0125automarketscan13.html>

Other than the notable exceptions of MSFT in OS/Office and AAPL in digital
music, there aren't a whole lot of better examples of monopoly power in the
online universe than eBay's.

---- 
Ziya

Best Practices,
For when you've run out of your own ideas and context.