What is eBay? The simple answer is that it is a global trading platform where nearly anyone can trade practically anything. People can sell and buy all kinds of products and goods, including cars, movies and DVDs, sporting goods, travel tickets, musical instruments, clothes and shoes—the list goes on and on.

The idea came from Peter Omidyar, who was born in Paris and moved to Washington when he was still a child. At high school, he became very interested in computer programming and after graduating from Tuft University in 1988, he worked for the next few years as a computer engineer. In his free time he started eBay as a kind of hobby, at first offering the service free by word of mouth.

By 1996 there was so much traffic on the website that he had to upgrade(升級(jí)) and he began charging a fee to members. Joined by a friend, Peter Skoll, and in 1998 by his capable CEO, Meg Whitman, he has never looked back. Even in the great. com crashes of the late 1990s, eBay has gone from strength to strength. It is now one of the ten most visited online shopping websites on the Internet.

eBay sells connections, not goods, putting buyer and seller into contact with each other. All you have to do is take an e－photo, write a description, fill out a sales form and you are in business; the world is your market place. Of course for each item(商品) sold eBay gets a percentage and that is a great deal of money. Every day there are more than sixteen million items listed on eBay and eighty percent of the items are sold.

1．We learn from the text that eBay provides people with ________.
A. a way of buying and selling goods
B. a website for them to upgrade
C. a place to exhibit their own photos
D. a chance to buy things at low prices

2．Why did Peter create eBay after graduating from university?
A. For fun.
B. To make money.
C. For gathering the engineers.
D. To fulfill a task of his company.

3．From “he has never looked back” in Paragraph 2, we learn that Peter ________.
A. did not feel lonely
B. was always hopeful
C. did not think about the past
D. became more and more successful

4．How does eBay make money from its website?
A. By bringing sellers together.
B. By charging for each sale.
C. By listing items online.
D. By making e－photos.