"Yahoo! Auctions is not contributing at all to the success of Yahoo!, so selling it seems the best option."

They are NOT selling it. They are just pulling the plug. As for whether it was doing Yahoo! any good, I think it was, indirectly. Obviously, they didn't think it was doing them ENOUGH good. Personally, I'm a bit sad to see the #2 auction site (from http://www.powersellersunite.com/ ranking) shut down. Not sure where you got your 0.2% number; Yahoo! had about 10% as many listings as eBay, and the fact that there was substantially less hassle and expense to use them lead to some growth over the last year.

Always on the cards since they ditched their fees. They have more fish to fry with the resources the auctions site was using up each day. Might be a good opportunity for a smaller player to gain some ground. Maybe its time for Bidville to make a move now they have a bit of money from their parent, or eBid maybe, I see they are giving away $99 life accounts for free if you import your yahoo feedback. Not a bad idea.

I personally think that Yahoo and Ebay will merge. It just doesn't make sense for Yahoo and Microsoft to merge...and beside the deals that Yahoo and Ebay have made with each other....made them merge without really merging.

Yahoo Inc couldn’t of cared less about the Sellers and Buyers and trying to make it a booming Auction Site.

Since Yahoo Auction went free the place was a mess! There was not one day that went by that Yahoo Auction didn’t have some kind of technical problem/issue. The Auctions customer service is/was a big fat F.

It also so happens that Yahoo Auction site was taken advantaged of by some companies who would place thousands of auctions listing for the sole purpose of Free Advertisement! Therefore it had taken some of the advertisement profit away from Yahoo Inc.

One company would even state on their auction listing that the item wasn’t in stock! and they had redirection links to there site. Those companies ruined it for the small seller and for the USA Yahoo Auction Site!

Ebid will be the most likely benefcators considering this offer they've made to ex-yahoo sellers:

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=62434

A lot of the Yahoo Auction sellers won't want to meekly go (back) to eBay so will be looking for alternatives.
As far as I know eBid is the only site so far to offer a special deal to both the US & Canadian members of Yahoo Auctions. Homepages of both sites give details of the offer & how to import Yahoo feedback.
For sellers based in the USA http://us.ebid.net
for sellers based in Canada http://ca.ebid.net
unlike ebay, ebid don't force sellers to list on more than one site to sell internationally.

This is the best time for U.S. sellers to use the exchange rate to their advantage by trying to sell to United Kingdom buyers. Ebid's a great place to start as it was originally born in the United Kingdom.
The deal of Free Platinum Lifetime Membership for U.S. and Canadian Yahoo Auctions users is a timely one. (The offer ends 3rd of June 2007)

If you check all 4 of the Ebid sites, their total number of auctions is actually higher than Yahoo's.