You put your finger right on eBay's big weakness.

A real auction has bidders present and attentive and it only ends when a final price is arrived at among them. By contrast, eBay auctions end at a specific time, without reference to whether a higher bid might be available among the bidders. That makes the "race to win" strategy possible and creates a huge distortion in the process of arriving at a final bid.

It's kind of the difference between an old time prize fight that only ended when one boxer was unable or unwilling to continue, and a basketball game that ends when the buzzer sounds, even if a potential game winner left the hands of a shooter 0.1 second later.