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Online marketplace eBay disclosed some senior management changes, including the "planned departure" of Jeff Jordan, president of the PayPal payment processing division of eBay.

Despite what appears to be a decent run by PayPal since Jordan's December 2004 promotion to its presidency, the executive is out at eBay. The company revealed Jordan's departure along with other management shakeups today.

"Jeff has had a long and successful career at PayPal and eBay, building two of the most powerful ecommerce and payment brands on the Internet," said Meg Whitman, President & CEO, eBay Inc. "Jeff's been a valued colleague and close friend, and while I'm sorry to see him go, I wish him the very best."

The planned departure doesn't exactly ring true. At 47 years of age, Jordan isn't exactly a doddering warhorse. A Wall Street Journal article published in February about Jordan and the challenge of Google to PayPal presents the image of someone very aware of the competitive threat:

When Jeff Jordan learned last May that Web-search leader Google Inc. was building its own Internet-payment service, he reacted swiftly.

Mr. Jordan, who is president of eBay Inc.'s PayPal online-payments unit, immediately asked employees to unearth information about the Google service. Soon, PayPal employees were monitoring blogs, news reports and other data for information about Google's progress in payments. PayPal staffers even gleaned details about Google's plans during regular calls to customers who were eager to dish about how Google had reached out to them.
He also discounted Google CEO Eric Schmidt's comments that the forthcoming payments service would not directly compete with PayPal. Jordan doesn't come across as a guy marking time until a "planned departure" here.

Rajiv Dutta will give up the role as president of Skype to take Jordan's job. Dutta has been with eBay for eight years, and only took up the Skype job earlier in 2006. The job was not cast as an interim job for Dutta when announced; it is possible that this is part of some brilliant stratagem to throw off competitors, however.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.