Here's another indication that Meg Whitman's online auction monopoly, which threw two people out of a party just because they were wearing Google teeshirts, is rattled. We're hearing that Bill Cobb, head of Ebay's business in its home market, is out. Officially, the line is that Cobb, president of Ebay North America, is taking a sabbatical, but he's not expected to return. Ebay's domestic auction business is stagnating, and under threat from Google, which is wooing stores with text ads and cut-rate credit-card processing. Anyone have the back story on this?

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