Is eBay Bailing out of China?

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1. sean
   

   September 26th, 2006 at 8:15 am

   Surprised to see that Ebay is leaving China, but to be honest, Taobao is really doing well there!

2. Sean
   

   September 26th, 2006 at 8:21 am

   God I hate eBay. They are evil. Any negative news about them always brings a smile to my face.

3. Ching Chiao
   

   September 26th, 2006 at 8:31 am

   eBay did something different in Taiwan. They failed to fight with Yahoo! TW in auction market , so they turn to form a joint venture with PCHome, the largest EC company in Taiwan. The website name is called Ruten (www.ruten.com.tw), it means outdoor market….sounds very close to the Japanese leading EC site Rakuten (www.rakuten.co.jp).

4. Martín
   

   September 26th, 2006 at 8:38 am

   I think that it´s a non respect accion for your clients. If you have in your country every day consumers, and this consumers pay for your services, you -in this case, ebay a few month ago- can´t gave free the same service in other market/country. The same think happend in all over the word.

5. Martín
   

   September 26th, 2006 at 8:40 am

   Best wishes, from Argentina.

6. Andy Kam
   

   September 26th, 2006 at 9:32 am

   eBay is going downhill so hard it’s not even funny. I used to work there until last year, and the entire place is declining rapidly. People are no longer motivated, and the good people have been leaving in droves starting about two years ago. eBay is no longer “hip”. It’s actually becoming kind of lame to be excited about eBay at this point. I think eBay had the coolness factor going for it in 1998, or perhaps even until 2002, but who wants to hear anything about eBay anymore now? There is nothing more to be said. The site is full of grandmas selling useless garbage, the stock is in the shitter, and if you want to buy stuff there are so many alternative sites it doesn’t make sense to use eBay anymore. Buying Skype was a total act of desperation and confirmed the dire situation.

7. Jenny
   

   September 26th, 2006 at 9:41 am

   I know of one start up in semi-stealth mode (sorry no mentions here) in the US who is building something that just might knock ebay square in the face. I think its been in the works for 2 yrs. I strongly believe eBay will have to buy them to hold their market positioning. Im sure the other big co’s will want them too.

8. Mao Ze Dong
   

   September 26th, 2006 at 10:39 am

   What Ebay needs to do (to capture the Chinese market) is to offer Black Audi’s, Mercedes Benz’s, BMW’s and other expensive consumer items to the new Communist elites and their croonies. Ebay just does not know how to use Guanxi or bribe the correct officials to get into the game.

   Ebay should offer expensive cars, villa’s, Cayman Island bank accounts, 2,3,4th mistresses and wives and promote themselves as “Harmonious” on CCTV 9.

   China is the most corrupt place (san Africa) in the world.

   No other place in the world can you observe Government officials driving around with their mistresses in expensive cars next to peasant farmers pulling donkey carts on the 4th ring road of Beijing. Of course these outstanding government officials are able to have this type of lifestyle with a whopping 5000 RMB a month salary.

   Chinese you best start looking at what your government has given you.
   1. massive corruption
   2. Income gap
   3. Greed and cultural failure
   4. Pollution that will destroy your children’s future for a few extra yuan
   5. Massive poverty in the countryside

   Ask yourself, how much of the 10% GDP have you seen in your life or paycheck?

   Now how much has the government officials seen of that 10% 9.999%!

   Ebay is better to be out of the mess.

9. Terry Xu
   

   September 26th, 2006 at 11:33 am

   Yay, China is in a “I can’t get into your market and neither can you get into mine” paradise!

10. Bruce
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 11:48 am

    I see a Tom Online acquisition in the near future…Google, Baidu, or Alibaba /Yahoo.

    Microsoft doesn’t have much of a presence in China and definitely not in commerce. Considering the emerging China market I’m not sure if they would make a play or not. It’s quite terrible to see eBay pull almost completely out of the market in asia.

    Though what some might realize, there isn’t exactly an defined way to gain market share and traction in asia…unless it’s free to use.

    The China internet market is still rapidly expanding and the consumer segments have yet to settle. It’s a very different internet game for businesses to play versus the US or Europe.

    It’s a smart move for eBay.

    As for the other markets, eBay just needs to become efficient and lean. They’re definitely focusing on the leaks and fine tuning.

11. Skip Tracer
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 11:53 am

    Well, you probably need an economy that is less command and more market oriented for a business like eBay to succeed.

12. Garth
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 12:00 pm

    You can see how well free listing works over at edgeio.

    Paid listings weed out the crap, edgeio is all crap, but the listings are free.

    I’ll stick with eBay

13. Jon
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 12:15 pm

    Perhaps free listings are not the reason why eBay lost.

14. Rajiv
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 12:37 pm

    Yahoo was smart enough to leave china early, when they sold their local venture to Taobao…. this guy is real hungry and eBay will definitly need to fix their business model.

    Better late than never…!! Best of luck to ebay

15. lemon obrien
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 12:39 pm

    anyone besides me think the chinese are playing dirty…this is why the Bush administration sucks…they should be protecting/promoting american business….”the business of America is business” some former president.

16. Rajiv
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 12:40 pm

    Currection : Please read Taobao as Alibaba. Sorry for the wrong word

17. elvirs
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 12:53 pm

    oh no.
    I can not read techcrunch stories via my feed reader anymore:(
    all it gives me is just a few lines from the beginning of the story. oh no man.
    mike, why did u do this to your 120 000 readers.
    one hundred and twenty thousand readers, come on man.
    this is wrong move…

18. elvirs
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 1:05 pm

    an update:9
    my netvibes reader started to display complete story…
    love techcrunch

19. Erik
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 3:45 pm

    Yeah, this is big news, especially for eBay third-party developers.

20. Ping Liang
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 3:57 pm

    The trackback does not seem to work. My comments are here:
    http://pingit.wordpress.com/20.....-and-asia/

21. justin
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 4:11 pm

    good, a drop in market share becase of competition is good, ebay is a horrible company that thrives of scamming people, glad to see the chinese figure that out cause americans are quite slow to the beat on that. unfortunately you cant petition the government for laws to keep you open, and kill any other startups in stage 1

22. business
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 4:55 pm

    Taobao has a very knowledgaable management team who seems to have a better understanding of the market.

23. Hu JT
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 5:16 pm

    1. massive corruption
    2. Income gap
    3. Greed and cultural failure
    4. Pollution that will destroy your children’s future for a few extra yuan
    5. Massive poverty in the countryside
    ==========================

    Hi, Mao Ze Dong , you blurted out the secret that chinese communist party and western main stream media tried hard to conceal. Be careful if you live in china

24. Yossi Goldlust
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 6:01 pm

    Good analysis by Ping Liang and the aptly named Mao Zedong. Chinese companies are winning because they understand the market better and the power of guanxi. And if you don’t know what that word means you’ll never get anywhere in China ;-).

25. Mark
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 6:38 pm

    It was the chat feature on Taobao that did ebay in. Chinese love to chat. eBay thought it could just skate by on it’s international branding and just a little ad spending here. Don’t forget Taobao’s relationship with Alibaba, thus tons of financing coming in to support it. (indirectly via Yahoo, etc.)

    A foreign company will never have the guanxi of a chinese one. Period.

    Hopefully you can pay out enough bribes to officials to get the marketshare you need to lead. It’s very short term, but it may give you the advantage.

26. Ina Steiner
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 7:30 pm

    Alibaba has street smarts, as evidenced by their reaction to being banned from eBay Live conferences. In 2005, the eBay conference was full of people carrying bright orange Alibaba bags given out on the street by temps they had hired.

    In contrast, eBay has become very “corporate.” In fact, I suspect some managers disdain the sellers and items on their site, preferring to think of eBay as a marketing company rather than the liquidation/ collectibles marketplace it is. (see comment above)

    Alibaba is the only competitor that can play the PR game better than eBay. Today I reported on Alibaba’s take on today’s rumors. Alibaba’s Vice President of International Marketing said, “The real source of Ebay’s woes in Asia is its inability to understand local market conditions in this part of the world.” He went on to say that it is inevitable that eBay will withdraw from China.

    eBay would not comment beyond saying, “As you know, we are constantly evaluating our businesses to ensure we are operating as effectively as possible given local market dynamics and the needs of our local communities.”

    While eBay defeat in China is not certain, there are many challenges. I had written about eBay’s global growing pains in June, particularly some of the challenges of having integrated eBay Eachnet into the eBay platform. The head of eBay Marketplaces John Donahoe said the worst violations on eBay come from members who register in one country, then sell on an eBay site in another country. Donahoe said that in China, eBay has shut down registration for members without a manual verification. And sellers have been complaining of spam coming from Chinese members who offer to sell eBay PowerSellers counterfeit items to resell on eBay.com. China may be more than eBay had bargained for.

27. Anshul
    

    September 26th, 2006 at 9:20 pm

    This is news. The startup that ate its market share didn’t succeed only because of the free alternative. Most chinese web users prefer to use chinese web services whether or not they are good alternatives. Its just something that will take some time to change and for it to happen, China has to open its doors to more outside competitors.

28. Bill
    

    September 27th, 2006 at 12:41 am

    I agree with Anshul that the local competition greatly out weighs foriegn goods, in many sectors.

29. sean
    

    September 27th, 2006 at 1:33 am

    Hey,

    Some guys here are just naive, don’t always say sth like guanxi or corruption, you lose is because you don’t understand the market

    If you think the Chinese company succeed is because they have relation with government, then there are still many foreign companies(many from US) doing well in China. Don’t blame other things, you need to think of yourself.

    I admit that there is still government control of the market, but it’s the same in US, when some Chinese companies want to buy US companies, they get much pressure from US government. This is same all over the world.

30. Frank Cefalu
    

    September 27th, 2006 at 6:52 am

    The chinese market is all about free stuff. The more free it is, the better. Better off not going there for business. If they want good stuff they will have to go to the american or european websites to get it now. Too bad for them. I guess they dont mind sticking to fake stuff.

31. Jim
    

    September 27th, 2006 at 10:56 am

    This is the first bit of good news for eBay sellers that are angry with eBays high prices.

    http://www.sellerx.com

32. cindy
    

    September 27th, 2006 at 11:04 am

    This post seems to bring out all the cry babies. I wonder what makes them so convinced that a firm as awful as eBay has the birthright to dominate every market it enters. Well, the unthinkable news is if you can’t make it in China, it’s because you’re not good enough. Even Walmart loses to Carrefour, which is French btw.

33. Mr Wave
    

    September 27th, 2006 at 6:01 pm

    Sohu is reporting that eBay Inc will acquire Tencent Holdings (0700.HK) which operates the QQ Instant Messenger service, China’s #1 instant messenging program. The report says that they are in a fifth round of negotiations.

    Read more

34. Ky0t3
    

    September 28th, 2006 at 10:10 pm

    GrandCentral.com dissapointed me. They don’t support firefox very much. I can’t import contacts or even upload a file to them. Big black text stating: This feature only supported by Internet Explorer. Very lame.

35. sean
    

    October 3rd, 2006 at 3:46 am

    Ebay China said they don’t have plan to leave Chinese market.

36. Andy
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 12:26 am

    Funny, when western companies lose out in foreign nations, they accuse those nations of closing their market. Did you guys even read the article? It said that Ebay lost its market share to a Chinese private company, Taobao. It is time for you to wake up.
    Talking about corruption in China while the phedopiles and corruptors are lurking in your own Congress is a hypocracy.

37. Kathy
    

    October 12th, 2006 at 12:19 pm

    Yes, eBay, move it on over. Get to work on eBay USA.

38. Cyn
    

    October 13th, 2006 at 12:34 am

    Many Chinese jewelry sellers are listing simulants as natural, and base metals as karat gold. US sellers can not compete when Chinese sellers misrepresent their items. On top of that US sellers pay fees. Many Chinese sellers do not. No way to compete when the tables are all turned against you.

39. Grigo
    

    October 17th, 2006 at 9:12 am

    Ebay/Eachnet responses to the market too slow. Some ebeyer told me that it take them 8 months to get a decidion approved from headquarter. They didn’t understand Chinese market is changing every minute.