If you can't trust the payment systems [on e-commerce retailers], you'll think twice about using the Internet.

It's a much more attractive market than the U.S. -- the growth of Internet commerce is less mature and Europeans love to travel. They have more vacation time.

With the growth of the Internet and the use of e-commerce, you're going to get more and more of these situations.

In assessing the growth of the Internet, and e-commerce in particular, many marketers, as well as many analysts, tend to overlook Germany, often merely lumping it together with the rest of the E-5 countries or Western Europe as a whole. That's a mistake. Germany is the third-largest economy in the world, right behind the US and Japan, and what happens there — and when and why it happens — is vitally important to the growth of the Internet's infrastructure and economy.

We don't intend to let a handful of rogues erode consumer confidence in Internet commerce or Internet auctions.

In assessing the growth of the Internet, and e-commerce in particular, many marketers, as well as many analysts, tend to overlook Germany, often merely lumping it together with the rest of the E-5 countries or Western Europe as a whole. That's a mistake. Germany is the third-largest economy in the world, right behind the US and Japan, and what happens there — and when and why it happens — is vitally important to the growth of the Internet's infrastructure and economy.