Intel Corporation has announced that John J. Donahoe, President and CEO of eBay, has joined its Board of Directors. He began his position at eBay in March last year, replacing Meg Whitman. Mr Donahoe will step in for Carol Bartz, who has resigned from the Board. Ms. Bartz was appointed CEO of Yahoo! in January.

EBay uses a lot of Intel servers to support its services, including eBay Marketplaces, PayPal's financial services, Skype's internet and video telephony, ticket site StubHub, and Kijiji's free online classified listings. EBay also owns 25% of Craigslist and StumbleUpon, a website recommendation service.

Intel seems to believe that Donahoe will be able to provide strategic insight on its customers based on eBay's wide scope and scale.

Frank Yeary, the Vice Chancellor of the University of California Berkeley will take up the position vacated by D. James Guzy, who retired last year after having served on the Board since 1969.

Yeary retired in 2008 from Citigroup, where he was most recently the global head of mergers and acquisitions. He also has experience in developing education partnerships between the public and private sectors.

Intel's Board of Directors is responsible for reviewing and approving the company's major strategic and operating plans, as well as financial objectives and providing insight in various fields. An example of this was the acceleration in Intel's 32nm production plans, which will see 32nm Westmere based chips almost a year ahead of schedule.

The legendary Craig Barrett is expected to resign from the Board on May 12 at Intel's next Annual General Meeting, when Jane Shaw will take over as Chair of the Board.

Meanwhile, the Board also declared a 14 cent per share quarterly dividend on the company's common stock. The dividend will be payable on June 1, 2009 to stockholders of record on May 7, 2009.

This is widely seen as a sign of strength despite a slumping economy, as its chief rival AMD does not issue dividends.