Yahoo China To Be Geared To Business

[engine]

Yahoo Inc.'s China portal will be reoriented as a business-focused search engine, the company's head announced Monday, saying the firm had to change or fail amid intense competition from domestic rivals.

Jack Ma, chief executive of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, which runs Yahoo's China operations, said specialization would help ward off competition from search leader Baidu.com and popular Web portals such as Sina.com.

"If Yahoo is going to win, it has to do so in a new way," Ma said.

Yahoo China To Be Geared To Business [latimes.com]

[bill]

This new direction may explain why Yahoo China's president quit after six weeks [webmasterworld.com]. Alibaba gained prominence as a Business to Business network. It makes sense that they would want to go in this direction. I fear that this may marginalize Yahoo China even further, but it certainly is a time to change the direction there.