eBay’s latest move, some of the auction site’s devotees say, is straight out of the Ministry of Truth’s playbook.

The company made an announcement on Tuesday announcement about lowering the listing fees for items–even though, in many cases, final value fees will be raised. The company’s discussion forums simmered with outrage over the executive decision, and frustration over the lack of other options for auction-style e-commerce.

Firefox has just turned five, and it’s doubtful anybody outside of Redmond begrudges Mozilla’s celebrations. The open-source browser now accounts for 25% of the global market, according to figures from Net Applications, and has brought a radical rethink in what we expect from a browser.

Google, the world’s top Internet search engine, threatened to shut its Chinese-language Google.cn website and offices in China, saying a massive cyber-attack from China had resulted in theft of its intellectual property.

Here are some foreign companies that have withdrawn from or sold down their investments in the world’s third largest economy:

Jack Dorsey revolutionized online socializing by co-founding Twitter in 2006. Now he wants to transform the way people exchange money.
Dorsey is leading a new startup called Square. Its first product resembles a cube: a tiny credit card terminal that plugs into the headphone jack of an iPhone. The goal is to make it easier to [...]

RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. In October 2009, Americans conducted 14.3 billion core searches, with Google Sites accounting for 65.4 percent search market share, up from 64.9 percent in September. Microsoft Sites grabbed 9.9 [...]

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) – EBay has completed its sale of Skype for about $2 billion to an investor group that included the founders of the Internet phone service.
Last week, the online auction site settled a legal skirmish with co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis which allowed the deal to move forward. The settlement gave [...]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Now that eBay has vaulted a major hurdle in its efforts to sell Skype, the Web telephony service must prove it can make it on its own.
Since its founding six years ago, Skype has built up a roster of more than 520 million registered customers who use the free Web service [...]

* Skype founders to get stake, board seat–report
* Index, Volpi dropped from investment group–report
* Skype founders to drop other claims against eBay–report
LOS ANGELES, Nov 3 (Reuters) – A settlement is near in a lawsuit that could have blocked eBay Inc (EBAY.O) from selling a majority stake in Web phone service Skype to Index Ventures and [...]

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, the founders of Skype, though their Joltid and Joost businesses, are seeking an injunction against Mike Volpi and Index Ventures that would prevent Volpi and Index from completing a deal agreed to in September to buy Skype from eBay….

WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) – Skype’s founders have asked a U.S. federal court to prevent Index Ventures and one of its partners from further participating in the proposed $1.9 billion acquisition of the Web phone service, according to a court filing on Wednesday.
The suit, brought by Joltid and Joost, the companies of Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom [...]