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To: Bill Harmond who wrote (38200)	2/5/1999 1:59:00 AM
From: KeepItSimple	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 164684

> Yes. Without question. William, what are you smoking? Do you have any recollection of the early personal computer years? Would you have picked Atari or Commodore, "without question" simply because they were dominant during the _very_ beginning? Is first to market always the winner in your investing universe?

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (38200)	2/5/1999 4:35:00 PM
From: Doug Fowler	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

William: eBay is clearly the leader in the auction space, and will be tough to catch. However, I think if YAHOO wanted to get REALLY serious in this space, they could do some things to pose a very big threat to eBay. For example, what would happen if YAHOO started PAYING sellers to list and buyers to bid, over a three month period? The idea would be to increase the traffic of buyers and sellers, and while some of it would be junk, there would still be a significant increase in traffic. Sellers go where they have a good chance of getting their item sold, and buyers go where there's a lot from which to choose. Today, that means eBay, but I suspect Yahoo throwing $20M or $50M or even $100M into paying sellers and buyers to build traffic would greatly increase traffic at the Yahoo auctions. The only other two companies I think that have a chance of beating eBay are AOL and MSFT. They could pursue a similar strategy.