I think it was Yahoo's turn to throw in the towel on most of it's worthless overseas auctions. The same thing recently happened with eBay giving up on the Japan market dominated by Yahoo. Yahoo might as well make some money off eBay by promoting the abandoned markets.
Yahoo does get to extract a measure of revenge on the French market that cause the stir by not allowing Nazi material on the Yahoo France site. It's like a troublesome baseball player getting traded to a bad team or released from the roster.
I do not believe Yahoo will ever sell the US auctions to eBay or the 3 million plus Yahoo Japan auction operations. Yahoo wants the Yahoo Shopping to be a big money maker and may simply shut down the US auction operation. eBay is too intergrated with shops, Half's fixed price & 100 million items, and Buy It Now prices for Yahoo to ever promote them which would only hurt their Shopping try to net commerce.
