'Net Buzz.

What else shouldn't we believe about eBay?

By now you may know that Pierre Omidyar didn't really launch eBay to help his girlfriend collect PEZ dispensers, even though that charming anecdote has been recounted by the press only slightly less often than Alexander Graham Bell's entreaty to Mr. Watson.

The debunking of the PEZ myth received a lot of ink last week, although much of it was curiously missing any sense that the myth makers did anything wrong. . . . Seems as though that's an oversight worth correcting.

According to a new book titled The Perfect Store by Adam Cohen, the PEZ fib was invented by Mary Lou Song, eBay's first public relations manager and its third employee. She resorted to the fabrication reportedly because she was having a hard time generating interest in the company. Omidyar agreed to go along with the ruse, accounts of which found its way into countless stories about the Internet's most successful auction site.

Omidyar acknowledged to the author that the PEZ story had been "romanticized." And last week an eBay spokesman told the Associated Press it had been "slightly blown out of proportion."

Of course, you might also call it a lie, but that word is so harsh.

"Deal with others the way you would have them deal with you," Omidyar wrote to the fledgling eBay user community in February 1996 when he was drumming up support for the site's vaunted Feedback Forum and code of ethics.

In other words, if you want to be trusted, be trustworthy.

That was sound advice, whether Omidyar always lived it or not.

He loves Netscape 7.0, but . . .

Sometimes the right hand doesn't know that the left hand went out and whipped up a fresh batch of code.

Witness this observation from James Gaskin, a member of the Network World Global Test Alliance who (outside of that role) recently put Netscape's newest browser through its paces.

"Being a Netscape fan, I downloaded the Netscape 7.0 code and liked it enough to make it my primary browser," Gaskin says. "So far, the only site I've tried that chokes on the new code is AOL Anywhere's main screen right after login."

"Does that make any sense at all?" Gaskin asks.

Nope.

"Could anyone at AOL possibly talk to anyone at Netscape?"

You might think so, given that they are one and the same corporate entity, thanks to AOL's purchase of Netscape for more than $160 billion in late 1999.

Glitches happen, of course, and it would be a mistake to read too much into this one. However, this type of thing does seem all the more common in an age where business barons slap merger deals together with bankers and lawyers, paying little heed to how the parts are going to fit later on.

More proof the rich aren't like the rest of us

Get a load of this subject line on an e-mail sent to gauge my interest in a recent e-commerce study by Jupiter Media Metrix: "Affluent Shoppers Will Spend The Most Online."

Do tell. . . . What might possibly account for such a phenomenon?

Might a disproportionate percentage of the rich have broadband in their homes and thus face fewer obstacles than the hoi polloi when shopping the 'Net?

Might more of the wealthy have high-powered jobs that leave them tied to their desks past closing time at the malls and thus no option but to shop online?

Or - and I realize this is a stretch - could it have something to do with the fact that affluent have more money than the rest of us?

Rich and poor alike should direct comments to buzz@nww.com.