Remember, Craigslist's best-funded competitor is Kijiji/eBayClassifieds. Craigslist has alleged eBay improperly used its minority stake and one-time board seat

Remember, Craigslist's best-funded competitor is Kijiji/eBayClassifieds. Craigslist has alleged eBay improperly used its minority stake and one-time board seat at Craigslist to help launch Kijiji using proprietary knowledge of Craigslist. An initial lawsuit over some of the issues in Delaware resulted in a split decision in 2010: eBay lost its board seat but the move by the other CL shareholders to dilute eBay's stake was reversed. Another lawsuit in California appears to be still in a lengthy discovery process, more than a year after a judge ruled against eBay's motion to dismiss, if I'm interpreting the data here correctly: http://webaccess.sftc.org/Scripts/Magic94/mgrqispi94.dll?APPNAME=IJS&PRGNAME=ROA22&ARGUMENTS=-ACGC08475276 http://webaccess.sftc.org/Scripts/Magic94/mgrqispi94.dll?APP... As a result... • Craigslist may seem paranoid but perhaps justifiably so • Craiglist may not want to grant an inch to anyone that might then also be used by Kijiji/eBay, with their near-bottomless pockets, to embrace/extend/extinguish the Craiglist core service • this sort of lengthy deep-discovery process can distract management and also impair internal communications/flexibility, knowing every word could become discovered fodder for a current (or future) lawsuit Any assessment that Craigslist is being a 'jerk' about competitive issues, without considering this giant factor, is missing a giant part of the picture.