Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) started its search-engine service last year to “cause sleepless nights” for Baidu Inc (百度), the industry leader in China, Alibaba chief executive Jack Ma (馬雲) said.
“Making life difficult for companies with established positions is what we most want to do,” Ma said on Saturday at a conference in Hangzhou, China, where Alibaba is based. He didn’t elaborate on the remarks about Baidu.
Alibaba, China’s biggest -electronic commerce company, started its eTao search engine last year and expanded into mobile-phone operating systems this year, seeking new revenue sources. Baidu fields more than 80 percent of China’s search-engine traffic after overcoming competition from Google Inc, the world’s largest search service operator.
Photo: Bloomberg
“If Alibaba wants to compete on search, bring it,” said Kaiser Kuo (郭怡廣), a Baidu spokesman. “Baidu doesn’t obsess about what the competition is doing. We obsess about what our users want.”
Ma is also overseeing changes at Hong Kong-listed flagship Alibaba.com Ltd, whose Web site is used by companies including Wal-Mart Stores Inc to find suppliers.
Alibaba.com, which said in February that some buyers were defrauded by vendors on its site, is now offering product inspection and escrow payment services to help boost protection for buyers, director of international marketing Linda Kozlowski said last week. All Chinese exporters that pay Alibaba.com to market their products will be audited, she said.
Photo: Bloomberg
Customers on the China Gold Supplier program declined as -Alibaba.com started a “proactive cleanup,” Kozlowski said.
The increased monitoring of customers was “a good thing,” she said.
Subscribers for its China Gold Supplier program for exporters fell by more than 4,200 in the quarter that ended in June to about 112,000, Alibaba said last month. In the previous three months, the company lost more than 4,800 Gold Supplier members.
More than 2,300 vendors used Alibaba.com’s Web site to defraud buyers, and about 100 employees were responsible for letting sellers create bogus storefronts, the company said in February.
Baidu accounted for 75.9 percent of China’s search-engine market by revenue in the second quarter and 75.8 percent in the previous three months, according to research company Analysys International.
Google’s share dropped to 18.9 percent from 19.2 percent, the researcher said.
Alibaba Group aims to increase transactions on Taobao (淘寶), its consumer-oriented arm, to 1 trillion yuan (US$156 billion) next year, Ma said. Taobao generated 396 billion yuan in transactions last year, according to estimates by Credit Suisse Group AG.
In June, closely held Alibaba reorganized Taobao, China’s biggest online shopping operator, creating separate divisions that serve bigger retail brands and smaller wholesalers.
Alipay (支付寶), the online payment business at the center of a dispute earlier this year between Alibaba Group and biggest shareholder Yahoo Inc, is worrying Chinese banks because it is lowering transaction fees, Ma said.
Yahoo, owner of the most--visited US Web portal, said in May that Alibaba Group spun off Alipay to a private company controlled by Ma without consulting shareholders. Ma said that month the reorganization was necessary to facilitate an application for an online payment license in China, and was discussed by Alibaba’s board for three years.
In July, Alibaba reached an agreement with Yahoo and Softbank Corp, another shareholder, over compensation for the Alipay spinoff.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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