It's not a good choice: the auction could end right after the first bid because most people might not even see the auction within 15 minutes.
15 minutes after the auction END TIME, not when the auction starts. So if the auction was stated to end on March 1 at 23:00 the auction is extended past that time if there has been a bid in the past 15 minutes.
This was a weird auction and its rules probably cost the owner a couple BTC. I guess the domain may not be worth the $120,000 or so 2 BTC is worth now (or is it worth that much?), but it was certainly worth 2 BTC at the time.