Alibaba Group has removed its classified listings business Koubei.com from Yahoo China and added it to Taobao.com, the company’s own retail site.
Alibaba runs Yahoo China and 39 percent of the company is owned by Yahoo. The Wall Street Journal reported that Alibaba is slimming down Yahoo China as part of a restructuring effort. The company in turn hopes to refocus the site on entertainment content.
It also has been reported that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is not pleased with the way Alibaba is handling Yahoo China. However, in June Bartz told investors that the current arrangement is more favorable than if Yahoo were to attempt it alone.
In 2005, Yahoo paid $1 billion for its share of Alibaba. But since then, the company’s share of China’s search market has declined from 21 percent to 6 percent, according to Analysis International. Baidu, China’s search market leader, has a 62 percent share, while Google has a 29 percent share.
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August 26th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Seems to me that Yahoo have made a bad investment here, $1 billion for a significant decline in users, perhaps the chinese market just isn’t right for them! Maybe a move back to an entertainment focus will gain them some more users.