First off, who says they have to grow? They're already huge. Even if they shrink a little, their place in the market is secure.

Auctions are a hassle for small potatoes sales, or for things that have an easily identified SKU that makes selling them for a fixed prize on Amazon doable-- I sell books all the time on Amazon, for instance. But eBay is still my fallback for when I want to get rid of some custom lot of junk or other weirdness. There's really nothing eBay can do about that.

But, in the end, the online auction market has matured. People get fewer amazing deals or windfalls as either buyers or sellers. Plus, nearly all the action takes place towards to end of auctions, with people having largely figured out that sniping is the optimum strategy. This takes some of the excitement out of the service.

I agree the auction market has matured -- and this is not a bad thing. It's sad that companies that have a stable sales and profit base aren't considered strong unless they grow every year; what's wrong with reaching a certain size and more or less maintaining that size? Strange thing, in a world of theoretical "green living" that we have to keep getting bigger every year.

I also agree that nearly all action takes place towards the end of the auction, but I don't agree that this takes any of the excitement out of the service. In fact I'll argue the opposite -- sniping is where the excitement is on eBay. In the "real" auction world, interaction among auction participants, gauging how much they're willing to spend, is a huge part of the deal (unless you're into sealed private auctions, which I find boring). Sniping can be like that -- you see how much somebody is willing to bid, you watch them, you bid as much as you think you can to beat them ... if you're smart and don't get caught up in the moment, this is where the "fun" part of the whole auction process is.

I tend to use ebay a lot for items that I either need or want but the product inventories are so low (and usually so expensive) that sometimes an auction is the best way to get what I'm looking for. Buy It Now is great, but how many people list a Buy It Now purchase of a 1968 Saab v4 Transmission (with working freewheel)?

Yeah, there's no reason companies have to grow, if they are privately held and their owners are happy with the income they generate. However, if you are a publicly traded company, like ebay is, and you don't pay any dividends, why would anybody own the stock if there's no growth? The stock price won't go up, as the only people making any money are the overpaid executives (at least their options will be worthless). They either have to grow, or start paying dividends that reflect the risk of owning the stock.

I hope that ebay's floundering will be highlighted when its' former CEO decides to run for governor of California. Whitman was totally overrated, and added very little value to ebay - she was there when they overpaid for skype, which will most likely never be profitable. She did nothing to prepare for the inevitable maturation of the online auction industry. The current listlessness of ebay has to be blamed on Whitman, she didn't leave that along ago for the blame to be assigned to her successor.

"Inevitable maturation". That puts this in perspective for me. Mr. Donohue and his crowd is trying to turn a business that is on a natural course toward turning into a slow grower into one that will keep on being Internet A Go Go.

I devoutly hope they fail, since eBay will be a much less fun, humane, interesting place if they succeed. (I.e., I don't know about you, but I don't hang out on Amazon.com for hours at a time. On the traditional eBay you could do that with pleasure and interest.)

dianasatyr