i believe there is no google-defined attribute as author; or rather, there is g:author for items such as books -- not the item's author data.
rather, there are name and email which are sub-attributes of author and are all atom namespace. i believe the reason ebay is being effected by such results is simply by happenstance -- ebay submits their items with a custom-attribute author. those example are accessing g:author -- not atom:name which contains atom:author data.
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