Meg to Street: "What, me worry?"

eBay just announced their 2nd quarter earnings and CEO Meg Whitman stated she's confident in eBay's future growth prospects. Meg also announced yet another increase in seller fees, this time focused more narrowly on eBay Stores sellers. She says they've "dilluted the magic" of eBay and by "magic" I must assume she means profitability. Apparently, the feeling is that higher fees will cause sellers to move their listings from the stores back to the auction format. Of course, it could just represent the last straw for unhappy volume sellers.

Meg also commented on Google Checkout, stating that she's not concerned about the competition. "We are going to innovate as we always have," she said. Of course, if you ask most folks, eBay's innovation starts and ends with its creation. Since then innovation has come through acquisition or through its public API (and we at gumshoo are thankful for that API).

These are some tough times for eBay. Growth is slowing and they are facing ever-increasing competitive threats, especially from Google. Fortunately, the eBay Developers Program seems to be getting a lot of internal resources and attention since innovation is most likely to come from the developer community.