Yahoo - eBay pact to affect Asia?

[bill]

According to an article [washingtonpost.com] the US partnership between Yahoo and eBay could have far reaching consequences for these companies' Asian markets. We are familiar with eBay's poor performance in Asia to date and Yahoo's strength in this area.

Yahoo's Asian partners now compete with eBay and would have to sign on to any deal, or cut their ties. Alibaba.com boasts more than 70 percent of the business-to-business auction market in China, where eBay has struggled to find its footing.

Many analysts said eBay could use a partnership with Yahoo to reenter Japan after a failed attempt in 1999.

I find it difficult to imagine how this will play out in Asia. Yahoo Auctions in Japan was perhaps the primary reason for eBay's demise here. And SoftBank (majority owner of Yahoo Japan) has invested in eBay's biggest competitor in China, Alibaba.

[asiaseo]

I cannot answer your question but would add for the sake of interest that Y are advertising heavily on South East Asia's most popular cable/satelite TV system, however, the results have changed over the past few weeks from giving what I think were pretty good results to ones that seem to go the other way. The market in Asia has not established such habit forms in search, my opinion is people will shift without question if they don't find what they want in their search results.
If we want to find something about a local town or neighbouring country we wouldn't expect to find results in the top 10 about Italy or the USA, and also not find any local sites at all in those results. My personal opinion is that local and regional search engines in Asia will now grow.

[bill]

This article gives a bit more info on the background of the China rivalry:

Yahoo-eBay War Rages in China [redherring.com]

"We need to remember that eBay has lost Japan and Taiwan," he said. "If there’s a perception of them losing China as well, that’s something that they’re not going to stomach."