To be clear, my point about eBay repeatedly acquiring smaller auction sites over the years wasn't to imply that they were doing something illegal or even shady by doing that. I have no reason to believe that any of these acquisitions weren't above board, and I think most were probably fairly savvy business decisions by eBay. I was mainly just pointing out the fact that it is evidence that eBay very much does take seriously their competition, even if that competitor is small relative to eBay. I am arguing that regardless of why eBay sent out that email, they definitely view/ed PWCC as a threat, and there is no shortage of very public examples of eBay attempting to minimize threats to their business, regardless of how small you think those threats might be (and PWCC is a much larger threat than many of the companies they've acquired or sought to acquire over the years). This in itself, of course, is not proof that they sent out that email for the sole intent of damaging PWCC's brand. However, I am simply pointing out that eBay has certainly established a precedent for this to be quite plausible.
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