

Ebay Gores Craigslist: Judge rules in favor of Ebay - cwan
http://247wallst.com/2010/09/09/ebay-gores-craigslist/

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MichaelApproved
What a scumbag thing to do to your investors. How long before we see the post
from Craig Newmark entitled "How I Should Have Screwed eBay When They Invested
In Me"

With a post on HN entitled "How being a geek made it hard to maintain
fiduciary duty to shareholders."

Craig isn't handicapped by being a geek, he's handicapped by being a cheat.
Calling him a geek gives the rest of us a bad name.

Edit: Based on the discussion below I think ebay should have never gotten
involved with CL in the first place. I still believe it was wrong for Craig to
pull these tactics but eBay isn't so innocent either. ebay shouldn't have
injected itself into such a hostel situation without a better plan.

Edit2: Reading more about the case it looks like craig won in the end anyway.
The shares in the business can't be worth much because future investors will
be scared they won't be able to get a board seat or have much influence in the
business. Why would someone else want to invest in CL? From what I can see
that's just what Craig would like.

~~~
justinchen
From what I remember ebay became an unwelcome investor when one the founding
members sold their stake to ebay. I remember there was a lot of drama as Craig
tried to block the transaction.

~~~
MichaelApproved
It's unfortunate that eBay injected themselves in a situation like that. They
made other stupid purchases (Skype) and should have done a better job learning
who Craig is, what he believes in and the friction it would create.

I would also hate to have an unwelcomed investor in my business. Company
culture is important and it sounds like what eBay stands for runs counter to
what Craig was trying to create. Having said that, it still doesn't give him
the right to cheat them out of what they bought.

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gojomo
A much more balanced and detailed report of the ruling is available here:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-09/ebay-wins-
lawsuit-a...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-09/ebay-wins-lawsuit-
against-craigslist-over-board-seat-that-was-taken-away.html)

Notably, while eBay gets some of Craigslist's actions reversed, and a bunch of
info they'd been denied, they don't get the board seat they wanted -- the
board seat that Craigslist's countersuit alleged was being abused for eBay-
Kijiji's competitive advantage.

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gigafemtonano
_EBay acquired its stake from a former Craigslist executive who was seeking to
sell his shares. Mr. Newmark and the Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster said in
separate messages posted on the Web that they never imagined a stake in
Craigslist ending up in the hands of a publicly-traded company. Still, the
former Craigslist executive made it clear to the company that he intended to
sell his shares and began approaching other parties, including eBay._

<http://www.craigslist.org/about/press/ebay.stake>

