what do you think of the recent changes of ebays policies and fees? have a look: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html $0.01 - $25.00** --> 8.75% of the closing value + starting price fees seller boycotts already took place, numerous companies started developement of free ebay clones. will we see a new ebay soon?
I think they made a mistake but who knows, maybe it will work out for them although I personally think it will be bought out by a bigger fish when its share price drops thanks to these moves and a downturn in sales.
Ebay will never die. I just heard on the news that Microsoft decided to buy/merge Yahoo. So maybe one day Microsoft will decide to buy Ebay also. Who knows what Bill will do next.
Last I heard on the microsoft yahoo buyout.. Was yahoo telling them they think the price isn't high enough. I don't know if that's changed since then. As for ebay shooting itself in the foot? I'm not sure. I don't know what the original values were, so I'm not sure how much of an increase this is. Any increase in price at all, will always result in people getting upset and leaving/trying to be competitive. It has to be fairly significant for the setback to be anything more than temporary. Still... It's not hard to swoop in and snatch up some of ebay's customers by making an over-all better site for them. No matter how many people do that, it won't kill ebay. They're already thoughrally ground in as the online auction site of choice, with years of experience and back development behind them... Back development which also includes thousands of people who would be super reluctant to give up their carefully crafted six hundred bajillion thousand positive feedback.