This is the current statement by Axel Hecht, Mozilla Europe [thread like above, p. 17...]:
Warum ebay Deutschland? Weil die an uns (ursprünglich an Robert Kaiser für die deutsche Lokalisierung von Mozilla und an Abdulkadir, die beide unabhängig voneinander das an mich weitergeleitet haben) herangetreten sind. Wir haben etliche Vorschläge diskutiert und werden auch weiter miteinander reden. Das ist keineswegs unabhängig von den Einwänden hier. Unabhängig von diesen Gesprächen wird Funktionalität und Aussehen des Mozilla Firefox von Ben Goodger bestimmt. Und kein searchplugin kommt in den offiziellen Build, nur weil einer mit Geld winkt. Nur für Funktionalitäten, die aus sich selbst heraus den Weg in den Firefox finden, erwägen wir Partnerprogramme oder ähnliches.
Attempt to translate (sorry for the poor quality! - brackets are mine): "Why ebay Germany? Because they contacted us (originally Robert Kaiser [mozilla.kairo.at] for the German Mozilla localisation and Abdulkadir [the translator] who both referred them to me). We [ebay and the people responsible for FF.de] have discussed several suggestions and will continue to do so. This is by no means independent of the objections raised here [in the German forum]. Apart from these talks [w/ ebay] the look and functionality of Mozilla FF is decided by Ben Goodger. And there's no search plugin put into an official build because someone's waving a dollar bill. Only for functions that find their way into FF because of their own quality [literally: by themselves], we consider partner programmes or the like."
My problems are: 1. why is there, generally speaking, a need to have a different searchplugin than the one on Mycroft (I've been using it for ages and it works perfectly fine). 2. why is there a need (or wish) within the Mozilla foundation to cooperate with ebay? [ok, figure that one out: money] 3. What is a "partner programme or the like" and where's the policy that's regulating "partner programmes"?
This all leaves a bad taste (with me). It's not that a searchplugin was added just because a company paid for this (like Axel wrote), but a searchplugin was modified to satisfy the (commercial) needs of a company, i.e. to make clicks countable.
I wouldn't have expected such a thing to be in FF without an explicit statement to the end user. And I'd like it removed asap, not only the reroute to Mediaplex via webtip.ch (which seems to have been removed by now acc. to Axel Hecht), but the entire reroute. Put in the ebay.de plugin that's on Mycroft, or will that cause a problem with ebay having already paid for this feature? (sorry, this is cynical, didn't intend to make it that sharp).