Valley Chic,
You might be sorry, but Ebay has been in a steady state of auction business erosion for quite a few years now. They know they have unsustainable gross income doing business the way they had done it before. They keep twiddling with everything they do, hoping that they can keep making high profits. Like losing thousands of sellers small and large, raising fees constantly til more quit, changing rules to tighten their grip on increasing controls of all aspects of their "Auction Industry", and in the meantime fending off other contenders to the Industry they used to entirely dominate. They have continually diversified their investments into similar venues and disimilar venues to generate stockholder share revenues.
Google is after a market share and or knowing them, market dominance. In the meantime Ebay could even sell out to Google, and quit the auction business entirely, but make money doing other things instead.
I diversified away from Ebay nearly 6 years ago and now Ebay in not my main source of internet revenue, but is in 3rd place for my gross income. I might add, Ebay costs me the most, dollar for dollar of investment compared to my other web venues. Times, they are a changin!