Yahoo! Europe will close auction sites and enter into a marketing relationship with eBay in six European countries. Under the terms of the multi-year agreement, eBay will advertise on Yahoo! on the UK & Ireland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain sites. eBay will be featured as the preferred online auction service on Yahoo! in these countries. The marketing effort will include banner advertisements, text links and other online advertising tools.

Reuters reported Thursday morning that Yahoo! could not attract enough users to these sites to allow it to charge auction listing fees. Yahoo! said the move was consistent with its "company-wide approach to focus on areas that will drive long-term growth and profitability." Yahoo! Europe's resources will be redeployed toward key growth areas within its commerce platform, which includes Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Travel.

"We're very pleased to be working with Yahoo! in Europe," said Michael van Swaaij, managing director of eBay Europe. "Yahoo! will help us extend the eBay brand to new users. In the near term, we look forward to welcoming Yahoo! Auctions users to our site."

The service will be suspended within six weeks. Auction services across the rest of the Yahoo! global network are not affected by this agreement.