Competition for ebay's slice of the pie is truly heating up and the heat is being felt.

Quarterly profit at eBay has risen 53 percent in the past four quarters comparing to 2002 profit boost of 235 percent. Their stock price has dropped on investor concern about slowing profit growth and increased competition.

Google has recently launched Google Base where users can post classified ads and job postings for free. Pressure could also be felt from Googles popular adword system. Apparently development is also underway for an online payment system and with Googles brand trust this would be a huge threat to the ebay owned Pay Pal.

Speculators also ponder whether Google Base is the precurser of a complete online auction system. Hmmmmm....

At Amazon.com they now have a Marketplace where you can list used items for sale at no cost until sale. Amazon collects the payment and sends the profits to you - Simple.

Add to those two the vast amount of auction centres going online and it's easy to see that ebay needs to throw down some more of it's marketing genius.