Email and news do not depend on any one website. But auctions like ebay's do. Why not come up with an "auction protocol" which allows anyone to "post" an auction which any "client" could pick up.

This way there could be a global marketplace not tied to any one site.

The same way newsgroups get propagated out, you get auctions propagated out.
-- triptych, Mar 15 2000

fairmarket http://www.fairmarket.com/
This company wants to establish a distributed consortium of auction providers, using fairmarket's software to propagate auctions between sites. [egnor, Mar 15 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004]

Unlike news, auctions are fundamentally transaction-oriented and need someone to be a central arbiter (because someone has to ``win'' the auction, after all).

That said... (see link)
-- egnor, Mar 15 2000



random, halfbakery