IAC is planning on spending $100 million on new ventures in China and is also looking to launch a Chinese version of Ask.com
According to the Wall Street Journal, IAC CEO Barry Diller said the new push into China would involve something that is “unique” and does not compete directly with existing players. The IAC owned travel site eLong has not be doing well in China, with Diller saying that “We bought eLong and promptly screwed it up.”
Diller said that online gambling was one area that IAC would consider in China. The China focused version of Ask.com will be available “within 2 years.”
Asked about the cultural difficulties of operating in China, Diller gave the WSJ a response that is bound to upset a number of TechCrunch readers in the United States, but certainly shows respect and recognition that American law is not supreme throughout the globe and that business is bound to follow the laws of the nations they operate in, even when they don’t like those laws: “Every place has got its constraints..It doesn’t bother me … When you operate in a country you play by the country’s rules.”
India and China esp Chinese Market are two large and momntous to ignore at one’s own peril.
http://tekno-wo...ld.blogspot.com
within 2 years
Two related links to article on China and the Internet…
http://thechina...dow-into-china/
http://thechina...ebsite-alimama/
2 years? Are they re-inventing the wheel? I understand cultural differences but IAC has search technology, how can it take 2 years to get a Chinese search out?
Regardless of the timeline, China is the world’s second-largest Internet market after the United States with more than 110 million users.
“IAC is planning on spending $100 million on new ventures in China and is also looking to launch a Chinese version of Ask.com”
Why don’t they buy an existing backend engine like say ours and repurpose it?
Wouldn’t that be far cheaper?
As long as they are going to do something different and unique, why not put out something more like Baidu than Ask. That’s what the Chinese people want and like.
I wonder what their new and innovative idea is that “does not compete with existing players”
I think the more important aspect of the announcement comes right at the bottow of the post.
“When you operate in a country you play by the country’s rules.“
Atleast IAC is honest enough to accept the reality.
Talking about the 2 years timeline for launching ask.com in china, my guess is they want to create an engine that is compliant with the local regulation right from the word go. However it may be a bit too late.
Update to @4, in that, as of June 2007, China internet users 162 Million, next to 221 Million in the US…
per the official http://www.cnni...ICreport-en.pdf
Regards,
/ac.
I disagree completely. If you’re an American based business you shouldn’t bend to the will of the Chinese government laws the SUBVERT and REPRESS democracy and ENABLE and ENHANCE a police state that decieves its own people. If the excuse is well, China is too big to ignore then IGNORE it. They don’t play by the rules anyway, (redirecting google to baidu). China cannot and should not be trusted. That’s fine if you want to do business there, but don’t compromise the integrity of this country while doing it. Its not American.
If American business had collective backbone, then that may go someway in forcing China to change. But they don’t and that is sad. Its a disgrace.
When you go to a new country, you need to follow their rules. I dare you not to drink in public when you go on a business trip in the middle east. You need to respect their rules. The rules may not be right, but it is theirs.
So, if there is a gay blogger in Iran who speaks out against some state abuse he witnessed, and iran asks yahoo or google to give them his information so they can execute him, then they should “follow the rules”? What kind of morality is this? How does this serve American’s interests and American perception? Does pursuit of profit override the moral compass of our nation?
I agree we need to respect the rules of specific country, but not when they cross the line of basic human liberties.
I beginning to think America has lost itself. Perhaps Bush torturing anyone “suspected” of being a terrorist started it all. Now internet companies don’t give a shit if countries execute or torture bloggers speaking about democracy and freedom. How f**kin pathetic and sad.
The question is not the size of china’s internet market.
And by the way, the number 162 million, those it refer unique internet connections, which broadband plus dial up, and those it take into account cybercafes, where a lot of internet activity goes on in china.
More importantly, what is the monetization strategy for investing in india or china. The advertisement market is huge in the US, is it the same in china or india. If it is, what proportion of internet users in those countries, actually make purchase decisions via the web, ala actually carry out ecommerce transactions? What is the credit card penetration in those countries, since we all know credit card drives most internet transactions these days.
It is currently very fancy and hype to say, oh I want to invest in china or india because of their large population, but demographics are not the only factor in business success, patterns of expenditure and physcology also play a big role.
Trying to export a cultural concept ala internet usage wholesale to these countries would fail because they are at a different stage of their development from the western world and US in particular, which is an information oriented society.
IAC would do a lot better improving their offerings in the US, in the line of semantic web, social search, library tools, publishing tools. Instead of making statements to get their stock price up. Amazon is currently doing that, even though its core business is not as solid as it everyone once thought, it is leading the way in bringing out other services (here in the states, not in china or india) like web services, kindle, groceries to compete more effectively not running with the hype to china like many MBA’s without common sense are doing.
You see will russian’s Yandex in China. The stock jump high all time. You know Yandex is coming to America soon.
Try this russian search engine.
Yandex. It’s pretty cool and super fast.
http://www.yand...text=techcrunch
Good, now they can track down freedom lovers and dissedents for themselves!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
Agree with 13.
A lot of these guys trying to “invest in china” are pissing money down the drain. I don’t mean china is not a lucrative market, but it currently does not have the characteristics that will support huge e-commerce activities. The only people that are prospering out of these deals right now are the initial stakeholders of these companies that take in foreign investment and float their IPOs. The investors that buy into this, well as they say: “Fools rush in”.
I don’t get these ‘2 year’ timelines. The net is going to be completely different in 2 years.
Is google lagging behind there in china market?
If Google is still searching for ways to gain market share against Baidu, and Yahoo and Microsoft are seing their already tiny market share shrink, I wonder what strategy the IAC has in mind that will make this move meaningful businesswise.