Last week, a number of publications reported that PayPal was in “late-stage talks” to acquire Pinterest for $39 billion. Such action would mean the digital payments company had finally acted on its long-held interest to get back in the e-commerce game. (PayPal was spun out of eBay in 2015.)

Pinterest is an intriguing company playing at the outskirts of the Amazon / Facebook / Google kingdoms. The company doesn’t view itself as…