Do you like auctions? Personally, I don't. Sure, the stock market is essentially an auction, but it's an auction without a lot of noise (at least on my end). Anyway, this brings me to a BusinessWeek piece on eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) and its evolution. It looks like auctions are no more fit to survive than the dinosaurs were. Research overwhelmingly shows that users of the most famous online auction destination in the world would rather pay a fixed price for an item than haggle over it like a frantic trader at a busy bazaar.

Now, as one commenter made clear in the article, this changes the essential gene structure of eBay's DNA. But is mutation necessarily bad in this case? Not to my way of thinking. To be honest, I haven't done any eBaying directly; I usually use a friend to acquire an item for me if I'm looking for something. Not only am I too lazy to open an account, but I dread having to play the auction game. Why put up with such nuisance? When I want to buy something, I don't want to compete and see values change. Think about it: when you go to Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), do you want to barter over a bar of soap?

Okay, so we're not talking about bars of soap. We're talking about items that, to be fair, do lend themselves to the auction motif. Comic books, autographed photos, rare recordings, and so forth, are definitely fair game for the electronic gavel. Still, it's annoying. Wouldn't you rather know that a rare copy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the Atari 2600 is $200, take it or leave it, and that you didn't need to get down in the pits to start bidding for it?

In this day of record-high fuel costs and erratic airline fares, it's important to have a reliable travel agent. For some, it's the online wonder of Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN), which offers traditional online-travel aids as well as a name-your-own-price service. Which, by the way, never works for me. I guess no one wants to accept $150 for a weekend trip from St. Louis to Seattle.

Anyway, Priceline has benefited from the nation's needy travelers, as evidenced by its third-quarter profit figures, released after the close on Thursday. The firm said third-quarter net income reached $104.4 million, or $2.27 per share, up dramatically from year-ago results of $47.8 million, or $1.05 per share. Excluding items, PCLN banked $1.58 per share, 30 cents above the $1.28 expected on Wall Street.

Revenue rose 33% during the 3-month reporting period to $417.3 million. This was 7.7% higher than analysts' consensus target of $387.5 million.

PCLN officials credited the building profit to success at the Booking.com site (the firm's European brand), as well as domestic growth. In after-hours action, PCLN is showing a gain of 12.85 points, or more than 15%. A move of this magnitude in regular trading on Friday would lift the stock to a new 52-week high and put it a chip-shot away from the psychologically important 100 level.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.