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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."
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 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.