NYT: EBay Chief Says Change Isn’t Over

I came across this New York Times article on eBay this morning and it seemed like the usual boring eBay business analysis story piece until I tripped over this nugget of information. This is the second to last paragraph on that article:

Mr. Donahoe outlined some more coming changes to the site. In Australia, the company is testing a program that requires sellers to accept only PayPal payments. Mr. Donahoe said that if the test was successful, the company would introduce it in other countries “in months, not years.” Mr. Donahoe said the intent was to cut down on fraud on the site, but critics say the change will entitle eBay to a double helping of fees on each transaction.

He actually gone on the record saying that eBay plans to make PayPal be the only accepted payment for eBay in more countries. The new PayPal only policy in Australia was a test to see if it would be “successful” enough to do the same for other countries. You can pretty much guess how he defines what successful means. Call me cynical but I doubt his definition of success includes sellers’ bottom line. If you thought that eBay can’t possibly get any worse than it already is, then you’d be wrong. It can.