Microfinance at MicroPlace. Trouble at eBay - ReadWriteWeb. "I think [fixed prices] will disappear online, simply because it is possible - cheap and easy - to vary prices online.
" That was MIT Media Lab's Patti Maes in 1999, at a time when eBay's business was booming and auctions were seen as the future of ecommerce. Flash forward 9 years, and BusinessWeek is today calling online auctions a dying breed, Nick Carr is wondering if auctions were a fad. Indeed, the fixed price ("Buy it Now" only) format is beginning to dominate eBay, and the company has taken recent steps push fixed price even harder.