Auctions have worse lock-in than you'd expect. You might think, if there's a marketplace with X buyers and another with X/10 buyers, most sellers would make the effort to list in the X/10 marketplace because they can increase their sales 10%. But with auctions, the sales price is a strong function of excess demand. Those extra 10% sales would be at significantly lower prices, and eBay merchandise tends to have low margins. When sellers lost money they quickly left.
It has been said that Columbus wasn't the first to discover America, but he became famous for being the last. After his legend spread, none could again make that claim credibly to the public.
Also I personally know a few people who work in an european eBay cubicle farm and can attest (through second-hand knowledge) to their abysmal corporate culture. Some of the stories I hear are straight dilbert material - and sadly that seems to be the rule, rather than the exception.
"Meg Whitman grew rich by developing an online marketplace, eBay, where people could buy and sell without ever meeting."
I recommend the book Paypal Wars. It was written by one of the "Paypal mafia." The book goes into quite a bit of detail about the early Paypal-eBay story, with an epilogue covering events until 2006. The reality is exactly the opposite of what the article claims.
Under Pierre Omidyar, eBay was a nimble start-up, and by the time Whitman came in, had established such a lead that the network effect was sufficient for them to retain their monopoly in the online auctions space no matter what. Whitman brought a culture of suits, endless meetings and powerpoint presentations into the company and quickly transformed it into a beast that moved at a fraction of its former speed. The new eBay took years to effectively integrate the payment system BillPoint which they purchased; if they had moved quicker, Paypal couldn't have survived, since they depended very heavily on eBay at the time.
The corporate culture-shock that the Paypal employees experienced upon being acquired by eBay, and their consequent mass exodus is now famous. If there is one positive thing that came out of the Whitman years at eBay, it is the fact that the Paypal people dispersed and went on to do great things and truly change the world :-)
Ironically, it was only around the time Whitman finally departed last year that it became clear that eBay was ripe for disruption. It amuses me that most of the business world, knowing none of the back-story, will think of the Whitman years at eBay as a glorious success.