Ebay has filed suit against craigslist and its board of directors:
http://news.ebay.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=305980
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.
For our part, we have always treated Ebay very fairly as a minority shareholder, and plan to continue doing so, despite this unfortunate development.
Addendum in response to commenter question – To be perfectly clear, Ebay’s stake in craigslist has not been “unfairly diluted” as they have claimed.
craigslist blog 