Thanks for your comments and insights. Just to clarify:

• I too don't think this means Perl is dying. Also this wasn't a PR news, but from a reporter of the magazine itself (neither eBay nor mobile.de wrote it).
• My first thought was also, that refactoring perl for two years would bring probably similar results BUT and this is what made me think: only if you get the right people.

And that is what my last paragraph was about. Most of the time, you don't get the right people for large-scale Perl projects.

Nevertheless - one big supporter of the annual German Perl Workshops is gone. Let's see if this gap can be filled in the future.