Ebay historical data. RE: A Great Find & A Defense of E-Bay

From: Doug Salot <doug_at_blinkenlights.com>
Date: Fri Jun 16 15:55:32 2000

On Fri, 16 Jun 2000, Chuck McManis wrote:

> >Ebay does not want keep all of the auctions as a publicly accessable
> >database, simply because it is not their job. After a few months, they
> >can "wash their hands" of the deal, and with it, any disputes that may
> >come up afterwards (problems in the car auctions leap to mind). They don't
> >want the legal hassles, basically.
>
> I don't believe this is true. I believe Ebay doesn't want to keep its
> auctions accessible because it wants to sell that information for money to
> people like appraisers for big BUCK$. I've been creating an automated
> process in my spare time to harvest the information I'm interested in
> (average selling price of classic computer systems) but not enough time etc.

eBay doesn't keep historical data because they don't want the storage
requirements or performance hit the data would give them. They have
*lots* of trouble keeping search performance acceptible given the volume
of data they need to index today. Multiplying that problem by an order of
magnitude or two isn't a problem they want right now. If their growth
stays flat, they may get around to addressing this -- I'm sure they've
considered it, but it's not core functionality.

Cheers,
Doug
Received on Fri Jun 16 2000 - 15:55:32 BST