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Technology Stocks : eBay - Superb Internet Business Model -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MR. PANAMA (I am a PLAYER) who wrote (1510)	1/30/1999 8:21:00 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 7772

EVERYONE WHO OWNS E-BAY STOCK PLEASE READ: You guys aren't going to like this. Yahoo! now has an auction site which caters to all the consumer markets that E-Bay has targeted. What is Yahoo!'s advantage? Use of Yahoo!'s auction site is completely free, whereas E-Bay charges sellers an insertion fee and a back-end sales commission. So the million dollar question is why list your item with E-Bay and pay money, when Yahoo! offers the same service for free? The only way E-Bay can survive the Yahoo! onslaught is to make their service free as well, and then start making money from banner ads and other advertising. However, I for one am shorting E-Bay's stock first thing Monday morning. If I can borrow shares to short, that is. The real problem is that I have been trying to short this stock ever since the end of the insider share lock-up period on Friday, but I can't seem to borrow shares to short. That means that there is a lot of selling of E-Bay shares right now. It's a miracle the stock has held up so well. Anyway, I have probably sounded alarmist, so even if none of you sell your shares, at least keep your eyes open for further developments. For fundamental investors, this news qualifies as a "change of the stock's story", which means you may reconsider your long term plans. Check out Yahoo!'s Auction site at the following link and compare it to E-Bay's: auctions.yahoo.com . I personally think Yahoo! has done a helluva job on their auction site. You guys may want to consider taking your profits in E-Bay and shifting them to Yahoo! This move is very reminiscent of Microsoft's style, clone and conquer. Good luck everyone!