The lawsuit that was filed by eBay Inc vs. Craigslist is now heading to the Delaware State courtroom and there will be a trial that would reveal the inner issues where eBay’s Meg Whitman and Craigslists’ Craig Newmark would be brought to the witness stand for their testimonies.
This trial had been delayed twice already. EBay and Craigslist are two giants of the internet industry. Ebay had pioneered the online auctions and generations over $8.5 billion in 2008 and has thousands of employees while Craigslist is a privately owned company with just a few employees and offers mostly free service for people who wants to buy and sell stuff using their online classifieds site.
Ebay’s April of last year’s law suit claims that Newmark and Jim Buckmaster had a “coercive plan” back in 2007 that decreased the percentage stake of eBay from 28.4 percent to 24.85% which falls below the 25% mark making them lose their seat on the board of Craigslist. The judge in the Delaware Chancery Court had dismissed two charges from eBay but five more counts are still in process including this case.
On the other hand, a month after eBay filed a case, Craigslist filed a separate lawsuit claiming that eBay have deceptive practices such as false advertising as well as trademark infringement. Craigslist claimed that eBay used their seat on their board to get information and launch their own website that is a competing site similar to Craigslist yet denying that it was eBay’s intention.
In Craigslist you can buy and sell stuff but it’s not like eBay where people could auction for the item. On the good side though is that Craigslist ads are free while in eBay you still need to pay for it.
Keith Teare has come up of a way to use Craigslist with a Google Docs spreadsheet so it could take bids for the item. What he did is he made hyperlinks on his ad directing the interested bidder to click on the link where he will be directed to his Google Docs Spreadsheet that is read only. Here the bidder can see what the highest bid is and what time the bidder made the bid.
At the bottom of his ad he made a form where the bidder could type in the required information such as the name, the amount of bid and the email address. This will then be directed to the spreadsheet but viewers can only see it and not edit it as it’s read-only.
That’s it! Now you can take in bids for your Craigslist ads.
With the recession and mass laying off of employees, there are many people who ended up asking for help from other people even if it means asking for a few dollars from them just so they could keep their house or feed their families.
This is what’s going on to several websites such as eBay and Craigslist where many people post their ads asking for some money from fellow posters. In Craigslist you can find an ad with messages asking for help because they’ve just recently been laid off from their jobs. Susan MacTavish, a Craigslist spokeswoman, said that there had been a significant increase on ads posted in the last 6 months with this message.
Although these ads are most likely sincere, there are still some ads that are posted by scammers so before you offer some form of help, make sure you are not dealing with a scammer. Deal locally so you could meet personally before you give the money.
It comes as no surprise now to see these kinds of ads, people are becoming more desperate since the world is suffering from a great crisis.
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