The original plan for the Bazaar was an auction house. However, there would be limits to what could be sold at the Bazaar and friends could freely gift items to each other provided they were friends for a “reasonable amount of time”.
The Bazaar that everyone usually references on this forum is the version that came much later in development. This version of the Bazaar changed at a conceptual level to be a more like browsing a random collection of individual player shops instead, with friends being able to gift items to each other, as long as the item dropped after both players joined the party. This is the version of the Bazaar that was removed from the forecast.