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Yahoo in China to promote search engine
www.chinanews.cn 2005-11-10 10:39:55
(Source: Agencies)
CEO of Alibaba.com Jack Ma smiles at a press briefing in Beijing November
9, 2005. Ma, who runs Yahoo Inc.'s Web portal for China, said he plans a
new strategy to promote the site as a search engine, saying he's ready to
spend heavily in a battle with Chinese-language search leader Baidu.com.
BEIJING, Nov. 9 - The entrepreneur who runs Yahoo Inc.'s China-based Web
portal has announced a new strategy based on promoting the site as a
search engine, saying he's ready to spend heavily in a battle with
Chinese-language search leader Baidu.com.
Wednesday's announcement by Jack Ma, chief executive officer of
Alibaba.com, highlighted the intense rivalry in China's market of more
than 100 million Internet users.
Alibaba took control of Yahoo's China sites in a deal in August, in which
Yahoo bought 40 percent of the Chinese company.
Alibaba unveiled a redesigned, simplified Chinese-language Yahoo site
that focuses on a search box and drops entertainment listings and other
features of the earlier site.
"What we are doing is sending out a strong signal to China, to the Yahoo
team: 'We are focused and we are coming,'" Ma told a group of reporters.
China's Internet market has attracted investment from major players,
including search giant Google Inc.
Daily searches by Chinese Internet users are expected to jump from 360
million this year to 816 million in 2007, according to investment bank
Piper Jaffray. It expects annual revenues from advertising on search
sites to reach US$1 billion (euro700 million) by 2010, up from US$134
million (euro100 million) now.
Alibaba.com, based in Hangzhou city southwest of Shanghai, runs online
commerce sites that link foreign buyers with Chinese wholesalers. Its
popular consumer auction site Taobao.com competes with the Chinese arm of
eBay Inc., the world's top online auction company.
Alibaba says its sites, combined with Yahoo's, have a total of 32 percent
of the Chinese search market, compared with 37 percent for Baidu.
Ma said he believed Yahoo has less than a year to make itself China's
leading search engine. After that, he said, Baidu's expansion will be
compete and the company will be harder to dislodge.
"If we don't move fast, within eight to 10 months, we don't have a
chance," he said.
��Alibaba aquires Yahoo! China
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