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.

There's a lot of chatter around the blogosphere discussing a formally announced agreement between eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) and General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM). I picked up on the official GM press release at Autoblog.

Here's what I make of it: GM will be placing all of its available GM certified, used car inventory from 3,900 dealers on eBay in the classified ad format. I believe this means that people won't actually be bidding for the cars on eBay, but they will be able to look at them there, and then they will be referred to the dealership that has the car they want. It may be similar to the way Craigslist operates. You know, Craigslist . . . an eBay company.

The GM press release states: "The eBay Motors agreement means that GM Certified dealers will have millions more eyeballs looking at their inventory, and more traffic drives sales," said Mark Mathews, director, GM Used Vehicle Activities. "Teaming with eBay Motors provides shoppers with convenient access to all GM Certified inventory and continues GM Certified's commitment to interactive marketing. We now offer our dealers the most comprehensive program in the industry, listing their inventory on more than 300 websites."