As part of eBay’s request that the ACCC approve their request to implement a PayPal only policy on eBay all interested parties were able to make submissions which the Commission would consider when forming their decision.
Following eBay’s response (and after the deadline for public submissions expired on 3nd May), one more 38 page anonymous report was submitted, which set out in detail why they considered eBay’s move to be anti-competitive.
It didn’t take too long though for one eBay user to expose the culprit, examining the hidden (but easily accessible) meta data of the document he found the phrase “ACCC Submission by Google re eBay”. The document has been replaced with an amended version with Google’s name removed.
This has to be embarrassing for Google, all the major banking institutions that made submissions did so publicly, and it looks much worse have your intentions revealed in this manner than it would do to be up front in the first place.
(Thanks go to Richard for spotting this story)
