 eBay-Yahoo-Amazon Troika Against Google?
 Documents in the eBay Seller Antitrust Litigation had previously alleged that eBay and Yahoo formed an agreement in 2006 dubbed Project Unity. A later filing alleges that eBay tried to work with Amazon.com to block Google Checkout and Bill Me Later, but as discussions were ongoing, Amazon.com came out with its own payment service.
While eBay's attempt to make its Australian marketplace PayPal-only were disallowed by the Australian government's regulatory agency, eBay's efforts to vastly restrict online payments in the U.S. have been met with no regulatory resistance, and the antitrust lawsuit filed by sellers has waged since 2007. The litigation stems from a lawsuit that alleged that eBay "utilizes its nationwide monopoly of the on-line auction market to monopolize the available forms of payment that sellers can use on eBay."
The plaintiffs in the case have fought for access to eBay documents during the discovery process. Unfortunately for observers, much of the supporting "evidence" for claims in the most recent document are redacted, meaning the juicy parts, such as internal emails from eBay and PayPal employees, are blacked out.
The document filed for Class Certification is quite serious in that it shows a rocky relationship between eBay and Google. eBay got into bed with Microsoft in recent years - was it to spite Google?
You can read more in Tuesday's AuctionBytes Newsflash newsletter.
And by the way, does anyone know eBay's code word for Amazon.com? It's redacted in the document.
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