Kijiji

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Kijiji (Swahili for village) is a centralized network of online urban communities for posting local classified advertisements. It is a subsidiary of eBay and was launched in March 2005.^[1] Kijiji websites are currently available for more than 300 cities in Germany. Further Kijiji countries are France, Italy, Canada, China, India, Taiwan and Japan. Kijiji was made available to selected cities in the United States on June 29, 2007.

In November 2004 eBay acquired Marktplaats.nl, which offers a similar classifieds service in the Netherlands, holding a 80% market share.^{[citation needed]} At that time Marktplaats.nl had branched out into Spain, Germany, Turkey and Canada under the brandname Intoko. Intoko Spain merged with Loquo, Intoko Germany merged with Kijiji Germany. Intoko Canada merged with Kijiji Canada. Intoko Turkey migrated to the Kijiji platform and is operating under Intoko.Kijiji.com.tr.

In May 2005 eBay acquired Gumtree, which offers a similar service for cities in Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the Spanish company Loquo. One month later it acquired OpusForum.org, another website offering online classifieds in Germany. In August 2006 Opusforum merged with Kijiji, which became the brand name for the German Speaking Area.^{[citation needed]}

Kijiji offers similar services and is seen as a competitor to craigslist but the latter site is less obviously a commercial enterprise. Kijiji's owner eBay is also a minority shareholder in craigslist. In April of 2008 eBay launched a lawsuit against craigslist claiming that their executives were attempting to weaken eBay's investment, while in May of the same year craiglist filed a countersuit claiming Kijiji had stolen trade secrets and that eBay used misleading tactics to promote the service.^[2]