The eBay Research Labs was on hand at the eBay Developers Conference over the weekend strutting off their brainy stuff. The labs are like Xerox PARC - think of a staff of geniuses (they wouldn't say how many people work there) thinking about the future of ecommerce and what it will look like in 3 - 5 years.

Senior Director Eric Billingsley, a nuclear engineer by training, explained that the labs are not charged with actual product development, but are more like a think tank brainstorming the future.

The eBay Research Labs is where Louis Monier worked before he left this time last year for Google.

Billingsley, Raghav Gupta and Adrian Cockcroft were demonstrating their new search technology. Currently, a search for iPod nano brings back many accessories on eBay.com. However, with the new search, it will bring back listings for actual iPod nanos. Users may be able to adjust the relevancy of the results with price point to give them more advanced searching options.

The new technology is already somewhat integrated into eBay Express, but won't be introduced to the core platform (eBay.com) until next year.

The three were also showing developers new search for mobile phones, something that is also forthcoming from eBay sometime in the future.

Update (6/21/06): eBay said the applications shown by Research Labs at the Developers Conference are proofs-of-concept, and may or may not be rolled out. If rolled out, they may end up being very different.