Re: Dangdang Unblocks Etao Product Search Engine, Ready to Play Nice
very cool for exposure and leads!
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 Reply to crainiac - Msg #2268045 - 05/09/2012 09:21
Dangdang Unblocks Etao Product Search Engine, Ready to Play Nice
It’s time for soldiers to kiss flag-waving young women on the streets and for doves to be released into the cloud-parting skies. Or something. Because two of China’s biggest e-commerce rivals seem to have called a truce, with Dangdang (NYSE:DANG) unblocking and rescinding its opposition to Alibaba’s product search engine Etao.
Last October, Dangdang and a number of other leading B2C e-tailers opted to block Etao from indexing its products, fearing that by cooperating with the service they’d be playing into the hands of Alibaba, which runs the market leader in online shopping, Tmall.com. But now Dangdang has apparently decided to play ball. The Dangdang site used to have a visible ‘robots.txt’ file that showed it had set Etao to “disallow” indexing, but now that file has vanished and has been replaced by a simple error page. It indicates the blockade has been removed.
Furthermore, a rumor in the Chinese tech media is suggested that Dangdang will make its new e-book collection open to be searched by Etao as well, and that the digital bookstore might even get an official online storefront on Tmall. There has been no official announcement on such a cooperation as of yet.
Dangdang is the fifth-largest e-commerce site in China by market share (in stats for Q4 2011), perhaps meaning its small share of the pie (just 1.6 percent) necessitates a less defensive approach to doing business. Recently, Dangdang has cooperated with big-box Chinese retailer Gome (HKG:0493). If this mooted warming in relations with Alibaba turns out to be true, then Dangdang and its CEO, Liu Guoqing, appear to be changing tactics.
Etao is still not widely loved, and is blocked by some larger e-commerce sites than Dangdang, such as Suning (SHE:002024) and 360Buy.
http://www.techinasia.com/dangdang-unblocks-etao-product-search-engine/ |
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