The US Department of Justice has closed a two-year investigation into alleged antitrust behaviour by online auction site eBay without taking any further action.

Investigators were looking at the website's licensing programme and at a settled case between the company and online auction aggregator, Bidder's Edge, which had agreed not to push eBay content on its website.

"The division has closed its investigations without taking action against us," eBay confirmed in a statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company acknowledged that any further action would have seriously damaged the eBay brand.

eBay released performance figures yesterday, claiming that as of 31 December it had 42.4 million regular users of its site.