Craigslist, the once-loved classified site, is continuing its ill-tempered rampage against would-be competitors that offer cleaner designs and better user experiences.
Last month, it sued popular site PadMapper for using information from Craigslist to plot apartments on a map. Weeks later, Craigslist changed its terms of service to say that users gave it the right to use their ads for copyright lawsuits (See: Craigslist’s Big Bluff).
As noted by The Verge, the company has now followed up these acts of churlishness by telling search engines like Google and Bing to stop indexing Craigslist results. This effectively turns the taps off the data taps for sites like PadMapper and, at the same time, makes Craigslist’s own listings harder to find.
It’s hard to see who wins in this scenario. Internet users will be deprived of user-friendly sites as Craigslist tries to draw them back into its tortuous 1990′s time warp. And while Craigslist might reclaim some traffic in the short term, it’s likely to alienate users and developers who are increasingly regarding it as an unattractive bully.
(Image by Lentolo via Shutterstock)
