eBay 2004 Annual Report Download - page 7

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services. eBay Stores enables sellers to show all of their listings and to describe their respective businesses
through customized pages.
In addition to our more established eBay Marketplace formats, we are continually looking for ways to
better enable members of our community to interact and transact with one another online. One new format
that we are exploring with our acquisitions in 2004 of mobile.de in Germany and Marktplaats.nl in the
Netherlands, as well as our investment in craigslist, is the classiÑeds format. These transactions will allow us to
increase our knowledge of classiÑeds-style trading. In addition, we recently acquired Rent.com, which will
allow us to expand into the online housing and apartment rental market.
Geographies
A key element of our growth strategy is to continually expand the eBay Marketplace to new communities
around the world. Providing access to broad markets and reducing the barriers of global trade creates value for
both buyers and sellers and greatly increases the vibrancy of our marketplace. As of December 31, 2004, eBay
and its consolidated subsidiaries had marketplace websites directed toward the following markets:
‚ Australia ‚ India ‚ South Korea
‚ Austria ‚ Ireland ‚ Spain
‚ Belgium ‚ Italy ‚ Sweden
‚ Canada ‚ Malaysia ‚ Switzerland
‚ China ‚ the Netherlands ‚ Taiwan
‚ France ‚ New Zealand ‚ United Kingdom
‚ Germany ‚ the Philippines ‚ United States
‚ Hong Kong ‚ Singapore
In addition, through our equity investment in MercadoLibre, our geographic reach as of December 31,
2004, included the following markets:
‚ Argentina ‚ Columbia ‚ Peru
‚ Brazil ‚ Ecuador ‚ Uruguay
‚ Chile ‚ Mexico ‚ Venezuela
Marketplace Services
Trust and Safety Programs
We have developed a number of programs on our eBay Marketplace, including our Feedback Forum,
SafeHarbor
TM
Program and eBay Standard Purchase Protection Program, to make eBay users more
comfortable dealing with unknown trading partners and completing commerce transactions on the Internet.
Feedback Forum: eBay's Feedback Forum encourages each user to provide comments on other eBay
users with whom he or she trades and lets every user view other users' proÑles, which include feedback ratings
and comments by other users. Every registered eBay user has a feedback proÑle that may contain
compliments, criticisms and other comments by users who have conducted business with such person. The
Feedback Forum requires feedback to be related to speciÑc transactions and provides an easy tool for users to
match speciÑc transactions with the user names of their trading partners. This information is recorded in a
proÑle that includes a feedback rating for the person with feedback sorted according to whether it was given
over the past month, six months, or twelve months. Users who develop positive reputations have color-coded
star symbols displayed next to their user name to indicate the number of positive feedback ratings they have
received. Before bidding on items listed for sale, eBay users are encouraged to review a seller's feedback proÑle
to check his or her reputation within the eBay community.
The terms of eBay's user agreement prohibit actions that would undermine the integrity of the Feedback
Forum, such as a user leaving positive feedback about himself or herself through multiple accounts or leaving
multiple negative feedback for others through multiple accounts. The Feedback Forum has several automated
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