BEGINNINGS

Did you ever hear of Echo Bay Technology Group?  This was a little firm owned by Pierre Omidyar.  He was a Frenchman who ended up in Nevada after matriculating in the U.S. at Cal Berkeley and Tufts.  Pierre had been involved in online journalism (kinda like me).  He was also a computer geek (kinda like me) who worked for several of the early software companies.

In 1995, at the age of 28, he struck out on his own and started writing code for a program that would allow people to buy and sell things safely on the Internet.   When he had it ready, he founded Echo Bay Technologies to make and sell the product.  He chose that name just because he liked the sound of it.  He tried to use EchoBay.com as it's web address but that name was already taken by an engineering firm.  Oops!   He had to settle for the name eBay.

Oh yeah!  Pierre is 51 now and his net worth is $10.5 billion (kinda like me).
(parts of this essay may include a taradiddle or two)
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