Disintermediation of eBay

On eBay's recent acquisition of Shopping.com, David Beisel writes:

Consumers are heading from Google or comparison engines straight to merchants’ sites that have “graduated” from the eBay platform ... eBay is cut out of the process entirely.

eBay’s acquisition of Shopping.com was partially a defensive power play against Google, as a way to capture searching shoppers before the traffic is sent elsewhere.

See also my earlier post, "Google and competition with eBay".

Update: Two years later, a BusinessWeek article reports the eBay "magic is gone ... Shoppers are simply not buying all the inventory anymore. Some items languish without a single bidder. Many shoppers opt for other sites including Amazon.com, use sophisticated search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, or head to store sites directly."