[potatolicious]

On the contrary, I think it's all about eBay has long been a market for new goods, instead of the used stuff that the original idea was based off of. Auctions just aren't a very good means to sell new goods.

Go search for any product you like on eBay - the overwhelming majority of the results are new items, from large-scale eBay dealers, using the Buy-it-now feature instead of real auctioning.

In this case eBay has simply become another webstore - and Amazon has had third-party sellers for quite some time also. As a webstore, Amazon's brand name is considerably more powerful than eBay. Not to mention Amazon takes payment on your behalf as a trusted entity - which is more than can be said for the money order and PayPal-based payment system of eBay.

Oh, also, so many eBay listings lowball the selling price and then destroy you on shipping. This is the primary reason why I stopped using the service - it was too much work having to figure out exactly how much it would cost to get it shipped to me. Amazon third-party sellers are locked to certain shipping rates.

[webnrrd2k]

Even as a web store eBay sucks -- it's hard to search for something and not get swamped in accessories/manuals/related junk for an item.

[elai]

Nowadays you can list listings by price + shipping. Amazon sufferers from USAitis really bad compaired to eBay, where shipping anything out of the usa (like canada) adds ridiculous shipping fees like $50 extra from a $5 to USA shipping fee. And most of it is not even available to ship to canada.