Craig Newmark admits he let eBay buy its Craigslist stake
Saintly Craig Newmark, whose Craigslist website is a friend to the apartmentless and lovelorn, has a confession to make: As we reported last year, his company helped broker eBay's purchase of a 25 percent stake in Craigslist — a transaction which made him millions of dollars. Newmark made this admission to Sarah Lacy in a Yahoo Tech Ticker interview, excerpted above. This is notable only because Newmark has long peddled the line to gullible journalists that eBay bought the stake out from under his nose without his consent, casting aspersions on the ex-employee who sold the stake along the way. Note how he dodges the key question — did he profit from the sale? According to Valleywag's sources, he did. But we'll give Newmark a pass on coughing up that fact until the next interview.