Craig Newmark testified on Thursday that he regretted getting into bed with auction site eBay (EBAY) almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. The founder of Craigslist, the online classified site that has decimated large chunks of the newspaper industry, sold 28% of his company to eBay in August 2004. Within months, he recounted, eBay began to pull back on its promises, causing him to regret the decision.

During the negotiations more than five years ago, Meg Whitman, who was the CEO at the time, told Newmark that eBay would be happy to sit back as a minority shareholder for several years and use Craigslist as its exclusive venue for classified ads. Yet, shortly after the deal closed, eBay pushed for a bigger piece of the company and acquired an online classified company outside the United States. Both Whitman and company founder Pierre Omidyar testified that eBay was clear about its intentions.

The lawsuit, filed by eBay against Craigslist, involves the size of the former's minority stake in the privately held, relatively low-tech and highly popular classified site. eBay claims that Newmark diluted its share to 24% through a "self-dealing" scheme to issue more equity.

Craig Newmark: eBay wasn't worth it originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The iron is hot for the striking, in fact it's blazing red hot. Right or wrong, there's another "shake down" happening at eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY). I'll spare you the details.

I'll get right to the point here because I know you have other reading to do. It's time for someone, anyone, to readjust the online auction game. However, I think it's about time to give up expecting that savior to be Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Someone with a couple million dollars needs to find and use the synergies among the growing multitude of independent online auction sites. I'm not talking about someone trying to buy them all in an attempt to sew them together. What is needed to completely change the playing field is for one single entity to create a one stop pipeline where all the little auction sites can be found.

Continue reading Consolidating the smaller auction sites

Consolidating the smaller auction sites originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 03 Jul 2007 08:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

"Gas prices are just going up, up, up, just like Google stock, baby, just like the Google stock," says Om Malik in his podcast with Niall Kennedy. eBay isn't, and in fact it is considering partnering with Microsoft (or maybe that's just a rumor it is putting out there for more bargaining power with Google).

eBay isn't working hard enough to improve the user experience, says Niall, and despite the coolness of Skype and Paypal, the core business - the auction business - is really where it needs to grow if the company is going to continue to increase its earnings.

What does eBay need to do to accomplish that? Simple, Niall and Om tell us, do these five things:

1. Integrate Paypal with the same address system, and with other services like Evite;
2. Develop a shareware application;
3. Have the ability to resell digital media like iTunes (maybe this is what they're thinking about with the Skype deal?);
4. Create a separate eBay 2.0 company that helps facilitate digital assets;
5. Buy Quicken and add it on to the eBay product line.

Five things eBay could do to improve its core business originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 27 Apr 2006 09:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.