quote:Originally posted by chocoabuddha:
Oh I see. So eBay already has Proxy Bidding? That's interesting.
Ebay's proxy bidding is, however, nothing like AS.
Ebay will start raising bids at the earliest moment,
while AS will not submit your bid
until the last seconds of the auction.
Your eBay bid locks you in and lets everyone
know what it was, while your AS bid defers your
actual commitment until the very end,
and does not let anyone know you were competing.
The very existence of the "bid sniping" industry,
of which AS is a part, is due to the fact
that it makes no sense to bid in advance
at an open auction, as well as that eBay
violates the very structure of open auctions
by stopping them at a fixed instant,
rather than after bid incrementing ceases,
all of which creates both the need and possibility
of "bid sniping," which does not exist
(and is in fact impossible) at real (live) auctions.