in a nutshell...
ebay (auctionweb) started - pierre put things up, and basically it was a "if you sell stuff, send me some money" site. like shareware, of sorts.
NOT with pez dispensers, as the pr machine made up later on (one of many lies from ebay's pr machine). and meg took no pains to hide this - in fact, she's been shot on the cover of a newspaper in front of a bunch of a bunch of pez dispensers.
there's a great book called _the perfect store_ which tells about it in a lot more detail.
it started in 1995...fees came in 1996...pierre had probably the ultimate combination of business and internet community (giving something back, etc.) but it was corrupted as things prepared for IPO.
ebay has NO care for what their customers 'want' unless:
-> they receive bad press
-> it makes them extra money.
no different than any other business, to be sure, but their pr spin contains so many lies whenever they add a change, it's ridiculous.
oh, people who were selling originally were promised IPO shares when the company went public. that's another thing ebay lied about...