Sniping (was Re: Vax 4000/90)

[Stan Sieler]

Some info about sniping, from an eBay employee...

> If ebay wanted to take advantage of the sniping phenomenon correctly,
> they would figure out a mechanism to bring it into their system, or
...

Yes, they could.  I was told (about 3 years ago) that they developed
the code to do it, but never enabled it.

Last week, an eBay employee told me something about such
anti-sniping proposals:  they put eBay closer to the auctioneer
position, which they DO NOT want to be in.  (There are rules/laws
governing auctioneers, apparently, which they don't fit.)

His claim was that by auto-extending an auction, it becomes the
kind of auction subject to those rules.  By simply having a
hard cutoff based on the clock, they're avoiding that problem.

It sounded plausible.

Stan
-- 
Stan Sieler
sieler at allegro.com
www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html