A message on the site said that its servers began experiencing problems Thursday night. Shortly after midnight, the company said it was rebuilding a "corrupt system disk."

The laborious process involves restoring its primary database server using archived files from computer tapes.

The company said that no data had been lost and that according to its policies, it would extend ongoing auctions 24 hours after service had been restored.

Complaint line

This was little comfort to users of the service, and users registered their complaints on an Internet newsgroup devoted to the service.

The shutdown came two days after eBay launched a redesigned service, and one user wrote, "Day/night 2 of the new eBay, and they're down for the second night in a row."

EBay may lose business to competitors such as Amazon

The shutdowns Wednesday and Thursday nights are not related to the new site design unveiled Wednesday, chief executive Meg Whitman said in a note posted for users of the site.

Another user warned that eBay would lose business to competitors.

"How can bidders and sellers put up with that downtime?" one user asked, and added, "they will get hurt as Amazon improves."

Amazon, which has made its name as the bookseller of the Internet, announced an auction service in March.

The market sours

Wall Street also took notice of eBay's woes.

EBay's stock dropped after the shutdown

The company's stock fell on the news of the shutdown, and finished down 10%, or nearly $17 lower, at $165 13/16.

EBay's floatation last September began a stock market rocket ride, which saw the stock rise from $8.43 a share to a high of $234 by April.

The news also affected other Internet stocks, who have already come off their highs for the year.

String of shutdonws

The shutdowns this week add to major problems experienced in May and last winter.

On 20 May, the site was down for almost seven hours. The company blamed that difficulty on database servers, which has been cited in the two failures this week.

The site also was down for 5 hours on 3 May. That problem was blamed on hardware housing the database.

The site also suffered three significant shutdowns in December.