In actuality there's very little fraud on EBay. The rules are very clear and transgressors are found out by the community. We have a feedback area where buyers and sellers are rated according to helpfulness and trustworthiness. It's a community ethos and that is one of our strengths. If that fails we have a 300-strong customer services department that will be able to follow up any complaints.
Users can also take advantage of free insurance and escrow services if they want peace of mind.
Auctions will evolve in the future. Already, new ideas are emerging and new methods of selling, like automatic price reductions on popular items. EBay will remain as it is for the moment, as this is what we do and this is what we're good at. We don't have any plans to expand out of the auction market and we're certainly not going to move into retail. We intend to keep ahead of the competition with initiatives such as localised sites for bulkier items.