BusinessWeek leads a cheer for Ebay

Sellers are finding more efficient or cheaper ways to make their sales. Buyers are finding easier or more exciting places to make their purchases. These two factors have been contributing to a slow, downward spiral for Ebay's core auction business. Once thought merely saturated, it's now a market threatening to cross over into decline.

Ebay (EBAY) has been making a play for increased listings from sellers through promotions, and now they are shifting to buyers with updated site features. Instead of continuously, incrementally improving over the past decade, Ebay thinks that they can fix everything, all at once, right now. Business Week seems convinced that it will work.

About two and a half years ago when problems were first becoming evident, Ebay's stock took a sharp dive, falling more than 40%. When questioned about this during the annual shareholder's meeting, CEO Meg Whitman brushed aside concerns about the stock price with this classic quote:

"We're bullish about the long term for the company," Whitman said. "Is the stock market efficient day to day, week to week? Probably not."

Ebay's stock price has still not made up for the lost ground, and Meg has sold plenty of shares since then, even recently.

So Meg: Is the stock market not efficient year to year either? Or are the recent changes, too little, too late?