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When comes up online auctions today, the name eBay certainly comes to mind first. This website was the very first with what is now past the online auction, which began in 1995, when Pierre Omidyar sold his first item. The item would be a broken laser pointer, which sold for $14.83 to a man who collected such objects.
The history from the online auction marketplace was created with that sale, and has continued to grow by exponential amounts because the first day. Omidyar quickly found that his hobby of making a web-based garage sale required to be a part-time business, which grew to a full-time endeavor inside a very short period of time.
In lots of ways, it's because of eBay that other online auction sites exist. Amazon.com was a fierce competitor throughout the late 1990's, as did Yahoo! Auctions, who actually have majority share of the market in some countries.
Other sites, while not as big, managed to leave their mark. ePier, started by a handful of poor students, continues to be one of the few sites to withstand all storms and continues on today.
Today, there is a definite move away from auctions to more traditional methods of selling. Craig's List and other online classifieds are gaining interest, and Amazon.com's open retail market has also gained quite a bit of share of the market with folks peddling goods using their garage.
However, a lot of their success is owed to the early pioneers of online auctions. Undoubtedly, you will see technology and new firms that go ahead and take market in a different direction, leaving online auctions to enjoy with a niche group, just like it was in the beginning.
