Friday, April 01, 2011

Baidu shutters e-commerce platform

News this week: Baidu, China’s leading search engine with more than 80% market share, has announced that it will be closing its e-commerce platform, Youa. The platform will be shut-down next month and users will be migrated to other platforms – primarily Rakuten China and Yaodian100.

Youa was established as a competitor to the Alibaba Group’s Taobao which now has over 370 million registered users and a more than 70% market share of ecommerce transactions in China.

A Baidu spokeswoman was quoted in a Thomson Reuters article, “This should not be seen as Baidu withdrawing from the e-commerce scene. In fact, we are in research and development on a new e-commerce platform product which will suit users better.”

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