The new layout is a very bad design. Especially 
for newbies.

The problem is that there is a "place bid" button 
at the very top of the page.  But all of the 
Terms of Sale, accepted payment methods, and 
shipping information is hidden down at the bottom 
of the page.

This is the inversion of the old design.  In the 
old design, you HAD to at least scroll past the 
TOS, payment methods accepted, etc. on the way to 
the "place bid" button at the bottom.

Now, newbies will be much more likely to place 
bids with a page-top clock, without noticing 
terms of sale now buried at the bottom of the 
page (such as "PayPal NOT accepted").

This is going to lead to an increase in unhappy 
misunderstandings between sellers and buyers 
after auctions have ended, especially with 
newbies who have not been conditioned to look at 
the terms of sale and payment methods very 
carefully.
 
Even the most rudimentary understanding of Human 
Factors and psychology of interface design makes 
clear that this new design encourages bidding 
without having had all the relevant information 
presented to the bidder.

The interface designers ar eBay are either very 
unprofessional practioners of their craft (if 
they did not intend this result), or are very 
clever people (if their intended result was to 
encourage more bidding without having the terms 
of sale presented to the bidder).

One can only speculate as to which they really 
are...