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If you have ever tried looking for an apartment to rent or furniture to buy on the Internet, you have probably heard of the popular website Craigslist.com. It was founded on June 21, 2006 by Craig Newmark and since then, it has been one of the most used classified sites on the Web which is now competing with eBay.

Today in the New York Times, it was reported that eBay, a popular domain for buying and selling among its users, has recently filed a lawsuit against Newmark and his chief executive, Jim Buckmaster. The lawsuit was put in place by eBay's introduction of a rival website called Kijiji, which also offers online classifieds. eBay accuses these two men of privately trying to dilute eBay's influence in the Craigslist company, in which Newmark is a major shareholder and eBay is only a minor shareholder. Ebay also accuses Newmark and Buckmaster of attempting to deprive eBay of its board seat, of which are Mr. Newman and eBay.

Buckmaster explained his opposition by stating that, "[Craiglist is] no longer comfortable with having eBay as a shareholder..." eBay has since retaliated by sending e-mails promoting Kijiji to its users while Craigslist has been adding new classified pages for areas where Kijiji is flourishing.

The competition is stiff for such a powerhouse like eBay against a rapidly growing site such as Craigslist. But who will take the cake? According to Alexa ranking, Craigslist has made it to a rank of 71, being the 71st most popular website online by Alexa voters, while Kijiji has slowly dragged behind with a ranking of only 3,764, a website that has existed almost a year longer than Craigslist.

Craigslist has been known to be one of the most user-friendly websites and has build up a reputation from users worldwide. Meanwhile, an increasing number of Internet users have been expressing their recent dissatisfaction with eBay, such as increasing service fees and unreliability of the products listed. These factors may make users apprehensive about the innovations of eBay an continue to rely on the stability of Craigslist.