Who remembers Amazon Auctions, for example, or Amapedia, Amazon's attempt to build a Wikipedia-like user-generated product directory?

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At the time, there were serious rivals to eBay, including Yahoo Auctions and Amazon Auctions, but eBay still had the bulk of online auction listings.

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EBay, the biggest single consumer-to-consumer auction-site, is worth 20 times as much as Sotheby's (in which Amazon, which runs its own auctions, recently bought a stake).

ECONOMIST: A survey of e-commerce