Like thousands of people around the world right now, Mark Jackson is peeved at eBay about some purchase gone sour. A Nintendo DS Lite, to be precise. Jackson was so peeved that he sent an email to several U.K. press outlets, copying eBay and demanding a response. This is only notable because Jackson is a high-ranking executive at Hill and Knowlton. And eBay does business with Hill and Knowlton all around the world -- but substantially cut its budget in the last month. Here's Jackson's screed -- and more about its curious timing.

eBay spokeswoman Shannon Stubo confirms that Hill and Knowlton still works for eBay, though not on as many projects as it did before last month, and never in the UK, where Jackson works. eBay, she notes, never authorized this particular press release. Jackson, however, was managing director of Hill and Knowlton's UK tech practice Earlier this year PayPal introduced a A former PayPal executive recently pointed out that PayPal, as a division of eBay, has swelled to 7,000 employees -- vastly more than it ever had as an independent concern. "What do those people do?" he asked. The growth in headcount had not led to a concomitant increase in inventiveness. Take, for example, the news, Here's the real takeaway from Fortune's eBay's campus in Campbell, near San Jose, has reportedly been Sunday's