flickering pictures

The eBay behemoth is suing the craigslist classified ad site, and strangely won’t say why. All it’s saying is that craigslist “unfairly diluted eBay’s economic interest by more than 10%,” and that the lawsuit aims to “safeguard its four-year financial investment.” That could mean anything or nothing. I’m guessing nothing.

The case has been sealed, adding to the mystery. And complicating matters further, eBay owns 28.4 per cent of craigslist, and there are concerns that the lawsuit is part of an attempt to seize the rest. craigslist seems baffled by the whole thing:

We are surprised and disappointed by Ebay’s unfounded allegations, which came to us out of the blue, without any attempt to engage in a dialogue with us.

Coming from a shareholder that views craigslist as a prime competitor, filing suit without so much as mentioning these assertions beforehand seems unethical, and hints at ulterior motives.

Ensuring the future well-being of craigslist and the craigslist community is admittedly very important to us. But Ebay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened here — unless of course they’re contemplating a hostile takeover of craigslist, or the sale of Ebay’s stake in craigslist to an unfriendly party. (In which case, they’re out of luck.)

Generally seen as one of the little guys in the corporate Internet world, craigslist is actually the seventh most visited English-language page on the net, according to its “about us” page. Still, its owners have never really sought to squeeze dollars out of the site, and out of the 450 cities it serves around the world, it only charges in ten. Maybe that’s what’s got eBay’s panties in a bunch.

I would have included a picture here of eBay’s logo, but given their lawsuit-happy mood at the moment, we’ll have to settle for a craigslist screenshot instead.

• plug this post
  
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati