The rumor mill is churning this week at eBay's Developer Conference, and the latest speculation centers around eBay search guru Louis Monier, who created Alta Vista in the 1990s for DEC. Om Malik's blog reports that Google is stealing away Monier to work on Froogle, its shopping feed (http://gigaom.com/2005/06/22/after-ebay-google-to-take-on-ebay/).

Interestingly, a developer from a marketplace management company told AuctionBytes Froogle sales have seen an increase in recent weeks for their clients (large merchants selling on eBay and other marketplaces). He said Google recently began including Froogle items on the top of Google searches. A search yesterday for iPod 20GM on Google came back with sponsored links, then "Product search results" beside a shopping bag that showed 3 results from Froogle, followed by regular Google results.

The year started out rough for eBay, and it looks like it's only going to become more challenging for the auction giant. Wednesday's Wall Street Journal article didn't help; it profiled sellers who were leaving eBay (Bidding Adieu: Threatening eBay's dominance, More Online Sellers Go It Alone).

Today's Journal article on eBay says the company has created a wholesale marketplace, something AuctionBytes reported on earlier this month (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m06/i16/s01).