Craigslist has fired back in a late night blog post, following eBay’s (NSDQ: EBAY) lawsuit announcement this afternoon: “Coming from a shareholder that viewsCraigslist as a prime competitor, filing suit without so much as mentioning these assertions beforehand seems unethical, and hints at ulterior motives.”

Then some conspiracy theories: “Ebay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened here—unless of course they’re contemplating a hostile takeover of craigslist, or the sale of Ebay’s stake in craigslist to an unfriendly party. (In which case, they’re out of luck.)...For our part, we have always treated Ebay very fairly as a minority shareholder, and plan to continue doing so, despite this unfortunate development.”

Of course, the post conveniently ducked answering the actual question: did Craigslist try and “dilute eBay’s economic interest in Craigslist by more than 10 percent”, as eBay alleges?

• eBay Finally Loses Cool: Sues Craigslist Over “Stake Dilution”