In the past year eBay has succumbed to cyberterrorists (a simple unauthorised DNS transfer arranged by a teenager brought down the auction giant's German site) and has suffered under the weight of phishing scams (its remote payment subsidiary PayPal was ceaselessly spoofed as criminals attempt to part users and their money).

Whitman's come back swinging against online criminals, though, getting into bed with Microsoft and others on the Coalition on Online Identity Theft as well as joining forces with Redmond again over the sale of dodgy software through the auctioneer's sites.

eBay has also proved something of a bellwether when it comes to tech investing - the ecommerce site has been putting its money into Chinese companies. It's also ventured into the red-hot nascent music download market in the US.

Despite the ups and downs of the online world, eBay remains immensely popular and is the service that gets many people to use the internet who otherwise would not. And Whitman is doubtless the one leading the show.