I've been following quite a few forums on this topic and also read an article in Business Week about the subject so I'm blogging about it and I'd like to get more feedback. We've all seen the trends that eBay has been favoring PowerSellers and stores for quite a while.

We've also seen all of buy.com's inventory recently loaded on eBay, which really makes you wonder what the most popular auction site will be like in a year or two. Will it become a hub for very large sellers, like Wal Mart, Target, Sears, etc. to load their inventory and offer it at a fixed price? Will we finally have to pay retail?

According to the Business Week article, "Sales at Amazon.com (NasdaqGS:AMZN - News), the leader in online sales of fixed-price goods, rose 37% in the first quarter of 2008. At eBay, where auctions make up 58% of the site's sales, revenue rose 14%." It also mentions that eBay's "Buy it Now" business makes up 42% of all goods sold on eBay and is it's fastest groing shopping business.

So what does this mean for the auction business? It'll never be like it was, but I'm guessing it will always be there. Maybe it'll be on the eBay site or maybe they will do a spin-off site focusing on auctions. Maybe auctions will be a separate segment of the site. I don't know, but the trend is reinforced every time we get an email discussing changes in fee structures, feedback policies, etc.