The present invention sets forth a system, method, and computer program
product for automating an interaction between a buyer and an electronic,
variable, dynamic pricing online auction service. The method can include
receiving a registration of a buyer at an Internet enabled buyer bidding
site, a portfolio, and account information. The method can also receive
entered information about financial transaction instruments, contact
information, and product preferences in an auction profile. The method
can receive a search query for a desired product from product auctions of
a plurality of auction sites and can use a search agent or a meta-search
agent, and can provide returned auctions, including retrieving and
presenting current status of product auctions. The method can receive a
selection of returned auctions to store in the portfolio for tracking by
scan agents and for bidding by bid proxies. The method can receive
selections of product auctions of the returned auctions and place the
product auctions into the portfolio for use by a cascaded bid proxy. The
method can provide auction monitoring by scan agents of temporal
progression of product auctions, and can notify someone via a messaging
center of any changes in relevant aspects of the status that could
prevent an initial bid from being placed by a bid proxy. The method can
enable activation of bid proxies as an auction nears completion to begin
placing bids until the auction is won or lost by auction closing and can
confirm a counter-offer has not out-bid. The method can compute and
execute another higher bid if a counter-offer has been made and accepted,
higher than the most recent bid detected.