Slashdot Mirror
eBay Sues Craigslist
phpmysqldev writes "In a very random move eBay has filed a lawsuit against Craigslist to 'protect its investment and shareholders'.
"In a statement, eBay claimed that in January, Craigslist executives took actions that 'unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest by more than 10%'." eBay is a minority shareholder of Craigslist owning 28.4%. Craigslist suspects eBay's intentions are less than honorable, speculating about a possible hostile takeover. The court case is sealed and eBay has not elaborated on its claims."
eBay's intention was never honorable, and that was obvious. Why ANYONE would ever think otherwise is incredible, they have no track record of honorable. At least not since Jeff Skoll left.
Is it just me, or is eBay well on its way to becoming yet another evil .com?
They seem to becoming obnoxious and litigious bastards more and more. Then again, maybe we just don't see the "eBay saves kittens from pound" stories.
I gave up on eBay years ago, but it seems like the only time I hear their name nowadays is in a story which shows them to be rather annoying.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Exactly. I had a couple of brief discussions over posts with Craig himself, back when he was CEO, and he saw craigslist as a community and runs it as if it were. I understand and respect this, being a San Franciscan myself; I find Craig's attitude to be an expression of The City's values with respect to greed and capitalism. Craig rightly values friends and having duty and loving work combine.
N.B. Craig likes to code. I take that back. He LOVES to code. That's why someone else is CEO. Craig just wants to hang out with his friends (perhaps hundreds or thousands of them) and invent things to do with computer programs.
Sounds like a good life to me! That's the nature of San Fran City and that's what made me fall in love with it lo so many years ago.
eBay Inc.
2145 Hamilton Avenue
San Jose, California 95125
Dear Sir or Madam,
I read that eBay has sued Craigslist on the grounds that eBay's shares in Craigslist have been "unfairly diluted." The details of the case are under court seal, but there is speculation, both in the public comment by Craigslist and on boards such as Slashdot.com, that eBay's real intention is a hostile takeover of a competitor.
In my view, Craigslist is one of the most popular services on the Internet due largely to its largely non-commercial nature. A possible outcome of the case is that Craigslist would be taken over and overrun by ads, and that it editorial policies would be changed to reflect more heavily commercial goals, to the great detriment of the quality of the service. I do not want to see this happen to this excellent community service. If the essential nature of Craigslist is degraded as a result of this lawsuit, then it is my intention to permanently boycott eBay and PayPal, to shift my business to eBay's competitors, and to encourage others to do likewise.
(Signature)
eBay is scared of Craigslist because it is a powerful local market (in many areas) which they do not control and therefor can't take a 10-25% chunk of any transaction as fees. Craigslist is a real alternative to people who are fed up with eBay and the ever increasing cost of doing business on their platform. The purchase of PayPal by eBay did little to help this and the blatant lock out of Google's payment scheme revealed just how low eBay would stoop to protect their interests at the cost of their customers.
eBay jumped the shark but the problem is that there are few alternatives to it. As small as Craigslist is, it is really one of the few viable world-wide local markets on the web.