A new service called Kijiji (brought to you by ebay) has been launched for US visitors. Apparently this site has been available to other countries for some time now, but the US launch was last Friday…and there was no big fanfare about it.

The site looks pretty decent and interactive, but I wonder how the battle is going to be between Kijiji and craigslist. To make things even more interesting, back in 2004, ebay bought approximately 25% of craigslist from a former craigslist employee. So now they have just gone in to competition with themselves.

Maybe this is their way of taking control of the online classifieds marketplace. Instead of using the buy-out method that so many online companies have been using, ebay has decided to start their own site with the same purchase and try to win the customers away from the competitor.