[photopress:baidu_1_2.jpg,full,alignright]Baidu and eBay EachNet have announced a multi-year agreement to cooperate in advertising, on-line payment and co-branded toolbar.
According to the agreement, Baidu will promote PayPal, an online payment tool by eBay EachNet, as the preferred on-line payment method on Baidu. In return, Baidu will become the exclusive provider of text-based search advertising on eBay EachNet, eBay’s China subsidiary and a leading e-commerce company in China.
This is a major step forward for Baidu and means that Baidu now has the game by the throat. It will be able to give Baidu advertisers with access to one of the most robust on-line communities in China.
It also means that eBay, which has lost serious money in China and was going nowhere, will now stay and PayPal will be its key business in China.
eBay thought that China would be a walk in the park. Since the beginning it has had the going pretty much to itself.
eBay was started in San Jose, California on September 4, 1995 by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar. It was then called AuctionWeb.
He realized the potential when he put a broken laser pointer up for sale and someone bought it for $13.83.
He emailed the winning bidder and asked if he understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained: ‘I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.’
eBay was not founded to trade in PEZ Candy dispensers. That is a PR story invented by Pez.
In September 1997 the company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay. Why the odd name?
Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group, Pierre Omidyar’s consulting firm. Omidyar had tried to register the domain name EchoBay.com but found it already taken by the Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, so he shortened it to his second choice, eBay.com. Now you know.
Baidu, although it became a competitor to eBay in China, is a Chinese search engine which can search text and images. In this it is very akin to Google and, indeed, Google was at one time seriously involved.
The Chinese word Baidu can be translated as hundreds of times although that is arguable. The story is the name of Baidu was inspired by a Song Dynasty poem written by Xin Qiji in the 12th century. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamor with the search for one’s dream while confronted by life’s many obstacles. Every journalist knows the feeling well.
Hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.
A sort of Chinese Lilli Marlene.
Baidu has an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images and 10 million multimedia files. Now it will move even further into marketing and selling on the Internet.
Source: Xinhua and research.