Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Bandwagon commentary

Never one to miss an opportunity, John Dvorak jumps in to the China stocks melée with an "I would have told you so if you'd asked me piece" on the grotty quality of most Chinese Internet businesses. His insight:

...the Chinese have done nothing other than copy the best America has to offer, and locals use the local copy rather than the originals. That means others can copy, too.
I suppose that's why Yahoo!, eBay and others have done so well in China? Not.

He does have some back-handed compliments for the B2B favourite, Alibaba.com which he describes:
The only semi-original site in China is Alibaba.com. It is kind of a generalized clone of the numerous disintermediation sites promoted to death in the late 1990s as the new way everyone was going to do business in the 21st century.
He suggests that e-commerce can't work like it does in the glorious USofA because China lacks a delivery system. Ah, what it is to hold strong opinions based on limited knowledge. Creaky payment systems may be an issue, but delivery is not.

I do agree with him on one thing; " This downturn is a reality check. It was overdue". Let's just hope nobody is going to John Dvorak for anything other than opinionated fantasy. For reality, they'll have to look elsewhere.

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