"Bots" (software automation) could have many uses against a site such as eBay doing things such as setting up false accounts, automated bidding, price comparison services towards consumers or even towards sellers gifting a competitive edge. For example price adjustment engine's such as many use at the "Orange Box."
eBay has expenses in service delivery, connection servers, authentication servers, database and application servers all over varied states and the world, costs money. I've run across webs that do price comparisons with eBay, Amazon, Walmart etc. at times and make no mistake many many consumers use these. Imagine you're operating one, you want make sure the site data is as up to date as possible and that means pretty much a constant need for update of pricing data.
"Views" do not matter, "Conversion Rates" do yet views have a direct impact on conversion rates. Stopping recording of "Bot views" vendors can see is a "nothing" but stopping bots from access will surely result in lower conversion rates. If hundreds of price compare engines cannot gather and publish scarfed data then visitors of said price compare sites can't see the comparisons. Ultimately, its the other competitors such as Amazon or Walmart etc. who will obtain the views & conversion's to sales.
Many say people are being more money restrictive because of the Gas economics of today and most surely economics play part in discretionary spending to some extents. That certainly doesn't explain what's went on here at eBay as those impacts are not mirrored at other online venues more or less retailers or you'd be seeing it all over international and domestic news.
Corporations, especially those in sales create short and long term strategic plans. Vendors or consumers see changes occur as portions of those strategic plans are placed into action and it's anyone's guess as to what those short/long term plans actual goals are. There's been all forms of speculation on these forums most thinking short term and very few long term as short term vendors can see effects of, long term they've no clue of corporate plans and/or vision which are more often than not complex, intertwined trying to reap a long term benefit even if at the expense of short term revenue.
Vendors live in a daily flux loving things that bring in the money now or loathing change that reduces money now. A corporation such as eBay has competitors who think the same way and those competitors have strategic advantage's some via their very nature such as Walmart's strong retail presence. Others such as Amazon became quite visionary diversifying the company providing varieties of Digital Technologies to other businesses and even competitors, for example, last I knew Target Corporation contracted its online storefront operations to Amazon. Amazon does it's own card processing last I knew, Amazon built warehouses across the world and an ever expanding delivery service .vs. UPS, FedEx or the USPS. These are huge gains towards eCommerce competition just as Walmarts order online and pick up in store is.
The eBay Vault is a pretty big thing and I'd suspect that will be expanded but the thing to remember here is eBay has to strategically adjust to both market and competitors which takes long term planning. We all see eBay as a venue that has gifted us ways to sell things and seldom care see anything through the eyes of eBay itself.
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