New Apple search software? From The Economist-
"Yet if eBay prevails, customers could suffer. The pioneer of person-to-person online auctions benefits from strong network effects in its market—as the biggest bidding site, it is much more attractive to both buyers and sellers than are competing services. Success reinforces success. Given such an advantage, most analysts expect eBay to remain the dominant auction site, even though it faces increasing competition from Amazon, Yahoo! and, most recently, a network of smaller auction sites organised by FairMarket. The universal search sites level the playing-field a bit. If these services catch on, sellers would, for example, no longer have to go to eBay to get the largest possible market for their wares, says Mike May, an analyst with Jupiter Communications, a high-tech consultancy. Interestingly, eBay does say it would let AuctionWatch search its site, if the firm pays for the data and lists it separately from other auctions.
Other e-commerce firms might try to do the same. This would make life difficult for comparison-shopping sites, by stopping them from listing their prices alongside those of others. It would threaten one way in which web consumers can hope to get a better deal than their offline counterparts.
Whether eBay can ultimately succeed is, however, questionable. A new technology is already on its way which it will be hard for eBay to stop either legally or technically. The new operating system from Apple, a computer maker, due out on October 23rd, will include a nifty piece of software that eliminates the need for deep-linking websites, by allowing individual users to search for items across most e-commerce and auction sites. If eBay wins a court victory, it is likely to be both temporary and incomplete."
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