Passage 1 Like everyone else at eBay ’ s San Jose, Calif., campus, John Donahoe sits in a cubicle( 隔间 ). Though this is one of the Internet company ’ s oldest commonplaces, the company ’ s 6-ft. 5-in. new CEO really does use the tiny space as his office. Though love is a very fitting description for the Chicago native ’ s eBay tenure so far. In the nine moths since assuming the top job, the former Dartmouth basketball player, 48, has shown a penchant for shaking things up. In October he acquired three companies on the same day that he laid off 10% of eBay ’ s 16,000 workers worldwide. Although you ’ d think that eBay ’ s flagship marketplace business, as site where people go to buy and sell stuff, would flourish in a downturn, it has stopped growing. It ’ s still unclear how badly the credit crisis and buying slowdown will affect an e-commerce value site like eBay, which does half its business outside the U.S. During the 2001 recession, eBay ’ s marketplace continued to thrive because of its Web dominance and discounted goods. Whitman at the time even crowed that “ eBay is to some extent recession-proof. ” Today that statement seems wishful thinking. In the third quarter, for the first time, transactions on eBay ’ s marketplace fell 1%, to $14.3 billion, from a year ago. The strength and popularity of Google ’ s search, Amazon ’ s sales and the sheer number of other Web retail sites have eroded eBay ’ s dominance, making it harder to compete with the same business model that steered the firm through its first 10 years of jaw-dropping growth. Three years ago, eBay boasted 30% more traffic than Amazon, but today its 84.5 million active users scarcely best Amazon ’ s 81 million customers. The troubled economy and weakness in eBay ’ s core business contributed to a 60% drop in market value this year. Amazon ’ s market cap topped eBay ’ s for the first time last summer. “ EBay used to own all the on and off ramps, and now it ’ s just another highway, ” says Scot Wingo, chief executive of Channel Advisor, a consultancy that works with online retailers. “ They have to figure out how to reorient the eBay brand to mean more than auctions and learn to become a leader again. ”