A year ago, we were writing about eBay and it didn’t look good. The company seemed to be afraid of Google, and was actively seeking partnerships to better align itself. We even linked to a post on Gigaom that Om Malik had written, 5 Things That eBay Can Do, which were his recommendations for the company. A year later, the situation seems to be significantly better for the online auctioneer, and as a staple on the Internet, I think that’s good news..

eBay has an online classifieds site, Kijiji, that has been available in Canada and parts of Asia and Europe, but only this week opened up a US version of the site. The site is a direct competitor to Craigslist, another of the old boys, and one that often stirs up controversy (the specific instance in memory is the Seattle Craigslist Sex Scandal, but this search proves its not the only instance). Kijiji is free to list on, like Craigslist, and already available in 220 cities. What’s more interesting is the eBay seems to have a 25% share of Craigslist (see Duncan Riley’s post on Techcrunch).

If opening up one of their properties to the US wasn’t enough, eBay has also released an eBay-edition of Firefox in partnership with Mozilla. From Duncan Riley’s post on Techcrunch:

Functions include
- An eBay sidebar that provides quick access and real-time updates on items users have bid on, are selling or watching
- Status alerts, including outbid notices
- Integrated eBay search
- Built in support for eBay’s Account Guard

Both moves seem to make sense, and seem to follow with our post about Value Added Services from last year.

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