Ouch, a blow to Passport and .NET from eBay

Looks like eBay is getting smarter about their platform strategy. They dropped support for PassPort and .NET alerts. eBay to Drop Passport, .Net Support Let me ask you this. If eBay asked you to install some software so you could keep real-time track of your auctions, would you? I thought so. e-bay auction event notifications are some of the most valuable event messages traveling the internet. Sometimes more valuable than my e-mail. Does eBay have the chops to drive a messaging standard? Well they obviousy want more branding in their messaging since they are keeping their own phone alerts and their eBay Toolbar. I think this is just the beginning of eBay the platform company.