eBay Stores VS The World: Round 1

eBay announced recently that pay-per-click advertisements would start appearing when users' search term returns zero results. And we saw this in the form of the usual PPC type ad box to the right of the pages where there were no products listed on eBay. OK, eBay's once again whoring itself out to other sites (this time YAHOO!), but many sellers didn't mind too much. At this point sellers, especially store owners, will agree to most anything, if it means another week or month without another fee increase. However, this weekend, eBay apparently started testing the ad boxes even where item searches return results. In these instances, the items are squished into the middle to make room for the paid advertisements on the right hand side. OK, now sellers aren't too happy about the feature, nor are they happy about what direction this advertising is taking.
For anyone interested in seeing what the future on eBay might look like, you can visit the thread on the eBay Stores board here: http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000223127&tstart=0&mod=1159217733204
Some sellers are reporting paid ads showing that offer lower prices than core listings on the eBay.com site. Check out the above link and visit the stores board thread on the subject. Someone has even captured a screenshot of the new advertisements. Recently there have been some serious issues with searching on the eBay site. Denials have been spewed repeatedly by eBay employees. Now, it makes you wonder if eBay isn't manipulating the searches to not show results a portion of the time, merely so that the paid YAHOO! ads show up on the side. It is about the end of the quarter, you know?