eBay joins hands with Baidu

eBay Joins Baidu, Competition Intensifies Between Two E-commerce Giants

Oct.11, 2005

　 　DongfangNet News：The merger of Yahoo.China into Alibaba has intensified the competition between the two e-commerce giants. Yesterday, News broke out that Alibaba intends to purchase Yipai.com to further expand it's reach. At the same time, eBay's Paypal is busy working on collaboration with Baidu.

　　According to industry insiders, Yun Ma(Alibaba's CEO) will formally take over as the president of Yahoo.China today. Alibaba's HR, PR directors will also take over related positions at Yahoo.China. Right now, there is only one matter left to be resolved. That is the negotiation with Sina.com since Sina owns 33% of Yipai.com.

Yipai.com provides almost exactly the same service as Alibaba's Taobao and possibly provides a focus point for Alibaba's future service integration. According to some informed person, Alibaba is talking with Sina to purchase these shares. Related person at Alibaba also confirmed this. Sina's spokesman Jianming Sheng said that Sina is only minority owner and dose not have overruling power. So everything will follow the normal procedures. As to the estimated price, None from Alibaba, Yahoo, and Sina has revealed any information.

Facing the ever enlarging Alibaba, previous relatively low-keyed eBay seems ready an all new strategy on competitions. eBay's online payment website Beibao(Paypal's Chinese subsidiary) just formed strategic partnership with Nasdaq new celebrity Baidu. According to the agreement, Baidu will employ Paypal as long term online payment solution. Both sides will also jointly develop next generation online payment products and services.

Since Paypal entered Chinese market in July, in only two months time, they have signed agreement with 15 banks and many well-known websites with very stong momemtum. One analyst pointed out that, "Alibaba, Taobao combines with Yipai" almost erased the slight lead that eBay/Each has in the Chinese market. While the "up down and across" strategy is probably the sharp weapon that eBay is using against Alibaba.