It seems a few years ago, but Ebay used to be the primary online auction until greed, success, and investors on main street got a hold of it. Ebay upped its fees, included main street items, and practices, and started vetting accounts of Ebay members.
The result, its stock price hasn’t gone anywhere in recent years. Even Amazon, its fiercest competitor has done much better in the past three years, with its moves into ebooks, cloud computing,… and forays into emerging markets.
In fact, Ebay seems to have gone into reverse: closing and/or selling operations in Taiwan to Ruten, and other areas, too. But in its space, new vendors have started up providing much more niche community-based auctions for many things that Ebay used to sell: antiques, stamps, etc.
It’s still driving a lot of eyeballs, so it will take a smart CEO to recover its position and market. Let’s see.