In a regulatory filing today, the company said it has asked shareholders to approve a plan to offer employees the opportunity to swap underwater stock options for restricted stock. “Like many companies, we have experienced a significant decline in our stock price over the last year in light of the current global financial and economic crisis,” eBay explained in its argument for implementing the plan. “Because of the continued challenging economic environment and the uncertain impact of our efforts to change our business, we believe these underwater stock options are no longer effective as incentives to motivate and retain our employees.”

And this may well be the case. That said, you’d think that the widespread and fast-mounting job losses in the tech sector would be enough to keep most folks still collecting paychecks coming in to work. Nice gesture, though.

“Number of times in 2008 that the S&P 500 closed up or down 5 percent in a single day: 17

Number of times between 1956 and 2007 it did this: 17”

– Harper’s Index

If Google shares drop any further, the company may have to reprice its employees’ underwater stock options a second time. Google shares (GOOG) slipped below $300 on Friday and remain there today, trading at $292 as I write. That’s less than half their 52-week high of $602.45. Clearly, Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s grim economic commentary last week has had a deleterious effect on the company’s once stratospheric stock price. But how else were investors to interpret his comments? “We are not immune” to current economic conditions and “I view the situation as pretty dire” don’t exactly hint at surprisingly strong quarterly results.

Sun shares are trading up on the news. That said, they’ve been trading higher for a few days now, inexplicably up about 20 percent versus Nasdaq, which isn’t doing nearly as well.

Odd, that, isn’t it?