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Any ideas?
This looks similar to a lot of the portal tie-ups that Google did in Japan. Many of the major ISP portals have deals with Google or other search engines.
Having lived and worked in Taiwan during the dotcom boom, I'm fairly familiar with PCHome and I can give you some further background on them:
PCHome used to be an entirely different site than what it is today. They had real journalists and interesting print publications and they were a leading and respected source for IT industry news. But they nearly went bust and so they kept the name and morphed into a major online shopping channel. Then just this year there were a couple new developments:
In June they launched what they called "Portal 2.0" which, just from the name, you know it's going to be a disappointment. They built near exact replicas of Flikr and delicious and digg, plus 3 or 4 other sites I forget at the moment, all in Chinese of course. But the sad part was these sites were missing all the hallmarks of any self-respecting "web 2.0" site: They did not use AJAX, were compatible only with IE, had no RSS feeds, and were only open to PCHome members. PCHome membership is free, however, PCHome is also the most egregious spammer in Taiwan. Once you are on their list, you will never get off, and you will be subject to dozens of spams every day. Taiwanese have by and large ignored these new sites, and the geek community has been very vocal in criticizing PCHome in recent days.
The most intersting development came a couple months ago when eBay announced they were quitting the Taiwan market and instead letting PCHome take over what was left of their business. Still to early to say how this will turn out.
This doesn't look like the full retreat that eBay pulled in Japan when they completely quit the market.
Was PHhome a strong competitor to eBay? I've heard that Yahoo auctions were quite strong in Taiwan.
