CL is popular because it's simple, easy, cheap. They have tons of competitors that they manage to beat, so they're doing something right. Companies that want to horn in on them should create the marketplace as well as the front end, but they would fail at it so they're just left with complaining.
Or, they "dumped" free classified listings into the market, killing off competitors (newspapers), giving CL a monopoly.
Of course they "manage to beat" competitors, that's not hard for a monopolist. But it doesn't equate to "doing something right."
The whole suit is ridiculous from the consumer/society perspective. You can't argue that scraping Google to get CL listings harms CL in any way whatsoever. So the only TRUE reason to sue 3Taps (or their customers) is to retain the monopoly, plain and simple.
I'm starting to think that, on balance, CL may no longer be a net benefit to society.
