Dive Brief:

• Web pioneer Marc Andreessen announced Monday via Twitter that, after six years on eBay’s board, he is leaving ahead of its split from payments unit PayPal.

• Andreessen had pushed back hard against activist investor Carl Icahn when Icahn was angling for for the companies to split, and the two have continued to have choice words for each other, jousting publicly in press reports as recently as this month. Andreessen in early October compared Icahn to "evil Captain Kirk," while Icahn said to CNBC that Andreessen "screwed more people than Casanova."

• Andreessen is a Silicon Valley pioneer, having worked on Mosaic, one of the first popular browsers, and later founded Netscape. His venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has gone on to fund many well known tech startups, including Facebook and Twitter.

Dive Insight:

Marc Andreessen and Carl Icahn could easily butt heads again, considering that they are both active investors. For now though, Andreessen’s departure from eBay marks the end of an era. Andreessen has been at the company since 2008 and helped shape its expansion from an auction marketplace to a more well-rounded retailer.