Slow morning so far at Bloggingstocks.com but I am bubbling over with story and investment ideas. It is very frustrating to have to recognize your mortal limits on a regular basis. So here is food for thought this morning...
Why in the world are eBay competitors not joining forces to challenge the quasi-monopoly? Why cant Buy.com merge with Overstock.com and embrace Ebid.net, uBid.com, and Bidz.com?
Here are the top twenty sites according to http://auctions.nettop20.com/. Why is that Yahoo Auctions and MSN Auctions or Amazon.com have not helped to facilitate this? The aggregation of these sites might form a true competitor for eBay. What is preventing this? None of them by themselves has shown any real challenge to eBay, but as a group, they might.
Consider this: one set of managers, and accounting departments instead of 20! One central advertising station, cost-cutting gone wild, and the scale of a real web powerhouse! The new entity could use Google Check-out (TM) or it could be Google Check-out!
What is stopping this from happening? Is it big egos? Is it divergent company philosophy? Are you listening Barry Diller? You could do this! Are you listening Ruppert Murdock? Maybe they already have something in the works.
Since nobody has done this, maybe it should be Google. But if they do it, it should be as a wholly-owned subsidiary. A different company. A new ticker symbol. Oh, if I only had the time.
In fact, I think I might do it myself. Why not? I do not see anybody else doing it and I sense a world of demand. Alas, I am just a mere mortal. I sometimes have trouble just collecting my thoughts. I don't know about collecting companies. So maybe it should be a real Titan of Industry.
Any of you Titans out there reading this? Share your thoughts!
Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for Design and Research of an Architecture & Planning firm.
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