eBay's China site to join global network
Published: September 16, 2004, 5:48 AM PDT
By
Reuters
SHANGHAI--Online auctioneer eBay will plug a recently purchased China site into its global network on Friday, creating new opportunities for a nascent but fast-growing operation, the company says. eBay bought homegrown Internet player EachNet in two bond transactions for $180 million over the past two years, and the auction giant now owns the company outright.
Since sealing the deal a year ago, EachNet has gradually been integrated into eBay's worldwide system--a process that will be complete with the Friday launch of a mirror EachNet site (at www.ebay.com.cn), said EachNet chairman Shao Yibo in an interview at the company's Shanghai headquarters.
"There are a lot of worldwide features (on eBay) that are not in China that would be useful locally," said Shao, who at 31 is a throwback to the Internet bubble wunderkinds of the 1990s.
eBay Eachnet, as the unit is now known, had 6.9 million users who traded $63 million in goods during the second quarter. The number of users was up 25 percent from the first, and the number of dollars spent up 28 percent.
New listings for the quarter grew 38 percent to 4.2 million.
Shao said those growth rates were generally in line with recent increases, but he declined to give any projections.
"In the long term, becoming part of the global network will help our growth rate. But it's harder to say in the short term," he said.
EachNet controls an estimated 60 percent to 70 percent of China's online auction market, worth an estimated $232 million (1.92 billion yuan) last year. It is the only one of the country's three best-known players to charge fees.
Two newer sites, a joint venture between Yahoo and Chinese online media company Sina, and Taobao.com, operated by homegrown Alibaba.com, both offer services free of charge as they seek to build their businesses.
Shao said eBay EachNet charges sellers a fee for listing, a sales commission and an optional fee for making listings stand out from others. Buyers pay no fees.
He said that payments for goods--often considered a stumbling block in a nation where credit cards and checks are relatively rare--was receding as an issue because more people are getting credit cards, and banks have started allowing online money transfers.
The rise of express delivery and alternatives to China's post office have also boosted the medium.
"Five years ago when we started, we encouraged local trading and estimated (that) 95 percent of (actual goods exchanges) were done in person," he said. "Today, over 70 percent of transactions happen between users in different cities. Of the remaining 30 percent, many don't meet in person. The spy movie (scenarios) are very few and far between now. They still exist, but users are very resourceful."
Story Copyright © 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Market share of Internet Explorer is dropping
By Wolfgang Gruener, Senior Editor
September 16, 2004 - 17:49 EST
According to web analytics firm Websidestory and a report published by eWeek, Microsoft's Internet Explorer suffered the most significant drops in usage in more than eight years. Microsoft's browser has dropped by 1.8 percentage points over the past three months to 93.7 percent of the market, Websidestory said.
One of the benefcators was Mozilla's Firefox browser which is recorded comined with AOL's Netscpae browser. The software has gained 1.7 percentage points since June and now is used by 5.2 percent of Internet users. Opera's browser rose 0.1 percentage points to 1.1 percent.
After releasing PR 1 of its Firefox browser yesterday, the Mozilla foundation announced record download figures of more than 300,000 within 24 hours. That level of downloads represents 10 percent of Firefox 0.8's total downloads over its first four months of availability, Decrem said to eWeek.
Microsoft said that it was not concerned of a major shift away from Internet Explorer.
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Amazon aims to go beyond Google
PALO ALTO, California Amazon.com plans to take aim at Google with an advanced technology that the company says takes searches beyond mere retrieval of Web pages to let users manage more fully the information they find.
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A9.com, a start-up owned by Amazon, said in a briefing on Tuesday that the service offered users the ability to store and edit bookmarks, keep track of each link clicked on previous visits to a Web page and even make personal "diary" notes on those pages for viewing on subsequent visits. .
It made the new version of its search service, named A9.com, available on Tuesday evening. .
"In a sense, this is a search engine with memory," said Udi Manber, a computer scientist who was a pioneer in online information retrieval and worked at Yahoo before moving to Amazon two years ago. .
Manber created the original A9 search service, which is based in part on search results from Google. .
He also led the development of Amazon's "search inside the book" project, which lets visitors to the Amazon.com and A9.com Web sites search the complete contents of more than 100,000 books the company has digitally scanned. Amazon's entry into the search engine wars will certainly raise the stakes in an already heated battle for control of what is believed to be the high ground in Internet commerce and advertising. .
Google, which had a widely watched public stock offering last month, is still the dominant provider of search results with 250 million daily searches. .
But Yahoo and Microsoft have become direct competitors, and a number of start-up companies are busy developing search technologies. .
Google executives did not return calls asking for comment. .
Amazon is also offering a dialog box that will enable customers on the Amazon.com shopping site to use the A9 service to perform Web searches. .
Company executives say they have no immediate plans to compete head-on with Google or with the other search providers. .
But analysts say the company is aware that search engines are often the starting point for online shopping and cannot help but see broader business opportunities for expanding more fully into online searching. .
"They've downplayed the idea that they're going into search," said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, an industry Web site. .
"They say, 'We're not competing.' But at the same time you have to wonder why they're doing it, and it's likely they're doing it because they see some potential in search." .
Amazon quietly established A9 last year as a subsidiary in a large office building. .
The startup has been offering a search demonstration page, which has so far been limited to the ability to record a history of Web searches. .
The new service goes much further, adding the ability to organize and retrieve past searches. .
The idea is to make searching more useful by making it easier to remember where a Web browser has gone before. .
"The ability to search through your own history of personal Web searches is insanely powerful," said John Battelle, a writer and consultant who is the organizer of the Web 2.0 conference to be in San Francisco next month. .
Battelle added: "This is a big deal. But the question is will people get the habit of using it?" .
The new A9.com search page permits users to search the Web and simultaneously retrieve related information from Google's search results and its image search service, reference material from the GuruNet service and additional information from the Internet Movie Database. .
A9 executives said that the new version of the service was simply a first release and that the company had extensive plans for adding new capabilities. .
"This is just version 1.0," said Manber. "There is a lot more to come." .
But Manber, who began working on information retrieval in the early 1990s as a faculty member at the University of Arizona, was reluctant to discuss whether A9 would become a direct competitor to Google. .
A9 is currently using Google search results and displaying the syndicated Google Adwords advertisements. The two companies share revenue from the advertisements. .
Amazon also has its own independent technology for indexing the Web, as a result of its purchase in 1999 of Alexa, a search company founded by the information retrieval specialist Brewster Kahle. .
The new version of A9 offers some Web traffic information derived from Alexa, but not search results. .
Initially, A9 will focus on managing information like bookmarks and search history, Manber said. "It's not just about search," he said. "It's about managing your information." .
The A9.com service will include a Web browser tool bar that has several innovative features, like the ability to create instant lists from individual Web pages and then use the lists to move among those pages. .
Moreover, it will offer a home page giving users the ability to edit and move Web links easily for later retrieval. .
The A9.com site will also offer a "discovery" feature that gives Internet browsers suggestions on Web sites that they may find interesting, based on their searches - a feature similar to the product recommendation features offered on Amazon. .
Manber said that A9 had no current plans to include paid ads in search research or to give a preference to products sold on Amazon. But he also said that he could not comment on future plans, except to say that A9 did have plans for new search technologies that would generate revenue. .
He stressed that the evolution of Internet search capabilities was still in its earliest stages. "We're in the Wright brothers phase of search technology," he said. .
The New York Times
AOL Won't Use Microsoft Anti-Spam Standard
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America Online Inc. on Thursday shunned a Microsoft Corp. proposal to help weed out unwanted "spam" e-mail because Internet engineers are reluctant to adopt technology owned by the dominant software company.
AOL, a division of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX - news), said it would not adopt Microsoft's SenderID protocol because it has failed to win over experts leery of Microsoft's business practices.
"AOL will now not be moving forward with full deployment of the SenderID protocol," AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said in a statement.
The decision is the latest fallout from a dispute between Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) and advocates of free, "open source" software commonly used across the Internet.
Rather than agreeing on one common standard to weed out fake e-mail addresses used by spammers, e-mail providers will be forced to use two slightly differing standards that until recently had been combined as one.
A Microsoft spokesman said the two standards will be identical in nine out of 10 cases.
"It's still going to be one standard, there's just going to be two flavors," Microsoft spokesman Sean Sundwall said.
Spammers often appropriate the e-mail addresses of others in order to slip through content filters, a tactic known as "spoofing."
Several proposals by Microsoft and others would allow Internet providers to check that a message from joe@example.com actually comes from example.com's server computers. Messages that do not match up could be safely rejected as spam.
The technology would be invisible to everyday users.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates (news - web sites) in January said the technique could help eliminate spam by 2006. Spam currently accounts for up to 83 percent of all e-mail traffic.
Microsoft in May combined its proposal with another developed by entrepreneur Meng Wong and submitted them to the standards-setting Internet Engineering Task Force for approval.
But several key players have said they won't use the standard because Microsoft holds patents on the underlying technology, even though Microsoft has said it won't charge royalties for SenderID.
The Apache Software Foundation, which develops open source software, told the IETF on Sept. 2 that it could not use SenderID under Microsoft's terms.
"We believe the current license is ... contrary to the practice of open Internet standards," the group said in an open letter.
AOL said it will continue to use Wong's Sender Policy Framework proposal to check incoming e-mail, and will test other methods as well, such as one proposed by Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) that would use encrypted digital signatures to authenticate e-mail.
AOL will use both standards to send outgoing mail, Graham said.
Microsoft will use SenderID on its Hotmail service starting Oct. 1, Sundwall said.
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IBM, LG Electronics to End PC Venture
SEOUL - International Business Machines Corp. and LG Electronics Inc. will end an eight-year alliance that helped expand the U.S. computer maker's presence in the booming South Korean PC market.
The joint venture formed by the two companies, LG IBM PC Co., said Tuesday it would dissolve itself by the end of the year.
IBM owns 51 percent of the company, which manufactures and markets personal computers in South Korea (news - web sites). LG Electronics, which makes consumer electronics and home appliances, owns the remaining 49 percent.
"Today's positive market conditions are favorable for IBM and LG Electronics to explore growth opportunities independently," said Kim Kwang Won, a spokesman at IBM Korea. "We believe this separation will bring better brand and market opportunities for both companies."
The two companies said the separation was unrelated to a bribery case in which three officials of LG IBM as well as three from IBM's Korea unit were indicted earlier this year, charged with paying off government officials to win contracts to supply computer parts and services to state agencies and state-run businesses.
Those six employees have since been fired because of their involvement in the case.
Established in 1996, LG IBM opened a door for IBM to expand its presence in South Korea. IBM was looking to boost its network and personal-computer businesses. For LG, the deal offered an opportunity to gain expertise in the manufacturing of PCs, a new product for the company at the time.
LG Electronics declined to comment on the announcement. But analysts said they didn't see the separation significantly affecting the bottom line of either company.
Both companies said they plan to continue exchanging technologies and jointly implement large-scale projects in the Korean market.
IBM Korea will sell its ThinkPad notebook PCs while LG Electronics will sell its Xnote notebook PCs after the split.
On Tuesday, LG Electronics shares closed down 2.6 percent in trading on the Korea Stock Exchange.
New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites)-listed IBM shares closed Tuesday at $86.72, up 23 cents, or 0.3 percent.
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Germans develop nasty case of IE jitters
By
Jan Libbenga
Published Monday 13th September 2004 11:22 GMT
Michael Dickopf, spokesman for the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), has told the Berliner Zeitung that internet users should switch from Internet Explorer to Mozilla or Opera. Dickopf says Internet Explorer is hazard-prone, attracting too many viruses and worms. BSI already uses a combination of alternative browsers, Dickopf told the paper.
Dickopf's comments are bad news for Microsoft. BSI is the central IT security service provider for the German government. Its recommendations are usually taken extremely seriously.
The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (Vzbv), a non-governmental organisation acting as an umbrella for 38 German consumer associations, also warns users to be careful when using Internet Explorer. Online banking scams and identity theft are proliferating in Germany due to security exploits in Microsoft�s browser or in its email client Outlook (Express). Recently, several customers of Dresdner Bank have fallen victim to a Trojan horse program, which snatched their banking passports.
Microsoft Germany denies that Internet Explorer is less safe than other browsers and says that it offers patches as soon as an exploit is discovered.
It isn�t the first time that governmental agencies issue warnings about Internet Explorer. In 2002 The Department of Homeland Security's US Computer Emergency Readiness Team touched off a storm when it recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft's Internet Explorer. �
Related stories
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Mozilla takes bite out of IE
Microsoft half fixes serious IE vuln
Internet Explorer. Quick, call security!
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PR0 League(Link Exchange)
Hi Everyone,
I am a new blogger and the current PR of my blog is 0. I do know more links will definitely help to increase the PR value. Whereas it is not easy for newbies to exchange links with high PR sites. Why not we newbies unite and exchange links each other?
I am not sure if many pr0 links will increase the PR or not, but I thought it is a good way worth to try.
If anyone agree with me, please reply and leave your blog info. I will link you immediately. Also I am open to any suggestions.
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