A very interesting article via MSN Money. I've abandoned Ebay (EBAY) as an investment many years ago as it's now a "value play" instead of growth, but have always said I'd love to get a piece of the action of PayPal if they ever spun it off in it's own entity. It's essentially a Mastercard (MA)/VISA (V) clone. It is now up to 1 of every 4 dollars of revenue for Ebay and why they don't create value by doing a PayPal IPO is beyond me. Amazon.com (AMZN) on the other hand has some interesting things going - they are a player in "cloud computing" and now this, a frontal attack on PayPal? Hmm... that makes them quite appealing to me, I just wish the valuation was significantly lower. We were hoping for a miss from Amazon.com last earnings report (Jul 22: Amazon.com for Gamblers) so we could get in far cheaper, but the company "disappointed" us by reporting solid numbers. The charts of the 2 companies over the past year, show the divergence.

• Since the dawn of Internet shopping, bargain hunters have reveled in the thrill of the hunt for deals at eBay (EBAY, news, msgs), the online equivalent of an auction house. But the thrill is going, going, almost gone. And eBay's losses are Amazon.com's (AMZN, news, msgs) gains in this battle to sell the most stuff on the Internet -- a battle that is about to take a turn for the worse for eBay.