Peter Jones

Yahoo Looking to Polish Its Image

Correction: it only sold its small stake in Alibaba.com. NOT Alibaba Group.

TOM Online Must Focus on Products: Connections Don't Ensure Success

Every single word in this article is 100% on the mark. Ebay's steps have seemed so entirely predictable that I'm not surprised they chose a parnter company with "connections" rather than relevance to their actual operations. This is probably Ebay's last great American mistake in the China market before complete disintigration in that market.

To see why they really screwed up in China, go to Alexa.com and chart a comparison of page views eachnet.com vs ebay.com.cn vs taobao.com. You can see that Eachnet was gaining momentum until they made the mistake of "delocalizing" their platform in China and using their US platform instead. At the same time the platforms were linked, Taobao's traffic took off. One can only wonder what had happened if Eachnet had stayed eachnet, they might even be ahead of taobao at this point.

In the end, it was business issues, not political issues that led to Ebay's demise in China. Although, political and regulatory issues create a convenient excuse for ebay management...