OT: New Coke
Need to tighten the straps on your Tinfoil Hat. There are many who believe, with some evidence, that the whole point of "New Coke" was to flush the supply of "Old Coke" so that when they "relented" and "brought back Classic Coke", nobody would notice that the sugar had been replaced by HFCS. This only makes sense in the U.S., where sugar incurs high tariffs and corresponding high local prices, while HFCS is subsidized.
But they probably recouped the cost of the "New Coke Fiasco" in a few months of higher margin on Classic.
And yet the story lives on, like the "Chevy Nova" one, or the notion that patents are for the benefit of small inventors, because, well, that one guy eventually got a payout for intermittent wipers.
As for Omidyar "playing to his new crowd", well, what do you expect? He's in business. You may as well be shocked that politicians lie or water runs downhill.