Why does the ebay.com, ebay.co.uk, etc distinction exist?

[celix55]

Why is there a difference between the different top-level domains? I can use a UK based account with .com, or vice versa (as far as I'm aware), but certain parts of my account can only be accessed via .com (I'm UK based), and all URLs in emails are also on the .com domain.

[celix55]

I should add (the albeit obvious) that the .com domain has a very US centric focus, despite my details being UK based, and no way of changing this, so I have to access ebay.co.uk to use it the way I want to, but I am still forced to ebay.com if I need to do some account-sensitive stuff and/or follow links in my emails.