Internet media company Yahoo Inc. will quit charging fees for auctions on its U.S. site in an effort to encourage more people to sell their wares, the company said Sunday.
Rob Solomon, general manager and vice president of Yahoo Shopping, denied the move was a defensive response to top online auctioneer eBay Inc.'s announcement Wednesday it had agreed to buy Shopping.com, a provider of online comparison shopping and consumer reviews, for $620 million.
"It's taken us six months for us to work on this. The timing of this (and eBay's acquisition announcement) is purely coincidental," he said.
Yahoo has no plans to end the fees it charges users on its other auction sites, including the one for Japan, the company's top auction site. The company also runs auction sites in Canada, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Yahoo said it will generate revenue from its U.S. auctions by continuing to have paid search listings by its Yahoo Search Marketing division. Paid search ads are triggered by keywords related to their product or brand.
Previously, Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo has charged users of its U.S. auction site 5 cents to 75 cents to post an item, depending on the starting price of the item.
If an item sells, the user then has had to pay a 2 percent final value fee that can vary depending on the closing price of the item sold. More expensive items carried additional fees that could total up to 1.5 percent of the final price of the item in addition to the 2 percent fee.
