Oh, how they grow up so quickly: One minute eBay is a fuzzy-cheeked trailblazer on a fledgling Internet – a pioneering online auction house where founder Pierre Omidyar could indulge his girlfriend’s passion for PEZ dispensers, or so the since-debunked tale goes – and the next minute the company unleashes an army of lobbyists on half the statehouses in the U.S. and all of its Congress.
Among that army’s primary goals? Convincing lawmakers that eBay is not, in fact, an auction house.
Why the double-speak? Because auctions are regulated and eBay wants above all else to avoid regulation.
“Deal with others the way you would have them deal with you,” Omidyar wrote to the eBay user community 10 years ago when he was eliciting support for the site’s Feedback Forum and code of ethics.
The language seemed straightforward and there was no mention of lobbyists.
Don’t know about you, but we can’t wait for the smart-mouthed teen-age years.
