Today, eBay is announcing a new fee structure that emphasizes fixed-price listings. In a move to attract more sellers, eBay will be slashing its fixed-price listing fee by almost 70 percent
Basically they want to compete with Amazon with fixed price sales and are moving away from their Auction model
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/08/20/ebay_change/
Sounds like a good thing to me. Normaly I can't be bothered with bidding wars and will look for a good buy it now with reasonable shipping charges and good rep.