EBay Used Craigslist for ‘Data Mining,’
Ebay purchased 28% of craigslist to get a spot on the board of directors and used that power to mine the craigslist database. Silly ebay, they could have done this anonymously through the front end of the site using a data mining program like Mozenda, not been caught, and saved the price of a board seat.
Next time maybe they will think the proccess through a little more.
The reason Ebay did this was to start up a rival site to craigslist.com. I think it is really funny that companies never think about going through the front door to data mine the web, they try to be sneeky. Grabbing this data with a screen scraper would have been so much smarter.
EBay contends Newmark and Buckmaster approved corporate governance changes reducing EBay’s stake in Craigslist to less than 25 percent, eliminating its right to elect a board member. Craigslist has countersued EBay in state court in California.
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