How Jack Ma took on eBay with Taobao • Hacker News Board

Re: How Jack Ma took on eBay with Taobao

#31

Post by techwizrd » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

docker_up wrote: post #9

Competing against eBay is like saying you're competing in a 100m race against someone in a wheelchair. eBay has done nothing to make itself better in the last 15 years. New "features" routinely fail, and their APIs are a graveyard of dropped ideas. I hope Taobao expands to the US, eBay needs real competition, anyone working there should be embarrassed for themselves, more importantly the Directors and above.

When I was interning at eBay a few years ago, they were doing some amazing work. I worked with the machine translation team and they were doing cutting edge research all over the place with new patents being awarded regularly (even to interns!). Many of their algorithms like spelling correction were significantly better than the state of the art, in part due to their unique data set. They were also actively rebuilding and rewriting critical services to improve reliability and speed, from their computer vision to their speech recognition to their search engine to their seller tools. They split from Paypal and rebuilt and redesigned the app and the website. They started shipping boxes to sellers with the eBay branding to solve the problem of seller's not having shipping material. They started marketing and selling eBay giftcards in numerous stores. They started curated collections of themed finds on eBay (and ML-generated collections). They were reaching out to major brands to sell on eBay as a storefront. They unveiled a really well done AI chat bot to sell eBay items to users.

It's an impressively run shop from a technical perspective at least. I do not think it's fair to eBay or it's current and former employees to say that they've done nothing to make themselves better in the last 15 years.

Re: How Jack Ma took on eBay with Taobao

#32

Post by metalliqaz » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

docker_up wrote: post #9

Competing against eBay is like saying you're competing in a 100m race against someone in a wheelchair. eBay has done nothing to make itself better in the last 15 years. New "features" routinely fail, and their APIs are a graveyard of dropped ideas. I hope Taobao expands to the US, eBay needs real competition, anyone working there should be embarrassed for themselves, more importantly the Directors and above.

I think in 2018 eBay has a lot of competition in the US. The bulk of the stuff on eBay are commercial sellers that can also use Amazon. When an average Joe might be selling his stuff, it tends to go on Facebook Marketplace these days, or Craigslist. The only thing they really have going for them is the auction format, but how often does THAT get used, even on eBay?

Re: How Jack Ma took on eBay with Taobao

#33

Post by taobility » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

From all these comments, you can tell how naive those commentors are. If you all blame the failure of eBay due to Chinese government, why it would choose Alibaba, not other Chinese companies? Why Alibaba would success and be one of Top 2 in China? In 2000s, Alibaba is nobody, and eBay is the giant with unlimited fund and great brand. But it still failed due to its vanity.

Re: How Jack Ma took on eBay with Taobao

#34

Post by scarejunba » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #22

scarejunba wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do. That's how we stop Broadcom from purchasing Qualcomm, get them to move here, and then still block them. Just business. The Chinese do it even better because the government is more powerful there than the US Government is here.

There is a big difference between blocking Broadcom from buying Qualcomm, and blocking Broadcom from doing business in the US. Which is what the equivalent would be.

It's just protectionism of different sorts. The difference is like that between a member of a Marxist Communist Party and a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. They think it's super different, but ultimately they're both communists.

Re: How Jack Ma took on eBay with Taobao

#35

Post by ucaetano » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

scarejunba wrote: post #34

WillPostForFood wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big difference between blocking Broadcom from buying Qualcomm, and blocking Broadcom from doing business in the US. Which is what the equivalent would be.

It's just protectionism of different sorts. The difference is like that between a member of a Marxist Communist Party and a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. They think it's super different, but ultimately they're both communists.

> It's just protectionism of different sorts.

Sure, but both being protectionism doesn't make them equal or even comparable.

Placing a 5% fee on certain products and banning all imports are both protectionism, but are in no way comparable.

Re: How Jack Ma took on eBay with Taobao

#36

Post by hawflakes » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

hawflakes wrote: post #2

I wonder if this gets into all the internal politics on the eBay-PayPal side of things...

I worked at PayPal on the China team. There were a lot of internal politics at the time and I know people on both sides of that internal fight. Needless to say, it was a battle that eBayPal wasn't going to win.

From slow servers hosted in the US data centers having to traverse the GFW to the massive payment friction compared to Taobao's checkout flow.

As for the politics, there were partially policy decisions and partially just a lot of internal infighting. Not to mention the time wasted making PPTs instead of fighting on the ground.

Re: How Jack Ma took on eBay with Taobao

#37

Post by taobility » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 6:57 PM UTC

taobility wrote: post #33

From all these comments, you can tell how naive those commentors are. If you all blame the failure of eBay due to Chinese government, why it would choose Alibaba, not other Chinese companies? Why Alibaba would success and be one of Top 2 in China? In 2000s, Alibaba is nobody, and eBay is the giant with unlimited fund and great brand. But it still failed due to its vanity.

It's easy to blame Chinese government as it's political correct. But don't forget, Chinese market is also a fully competitive market.

Re: How Jack Ma took on eBay with Taobao

#38

Post by hawflakes » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 6:57 PM UTC

ukyrgf wrote: post #27

hawflakes wrote: post #2

I wonder if this gets into all the internal politics on the eBay-PayPal side of things...

https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/01/technology/paypal-ebay-paym... They've already split off.

I was referencing the politics between the two companies at the time they were fighting Alibaba/Taobao/Alipay. I have some firsthand experience on the eBay/PayPal side of things.

Re: How Jack Ma took on eBay with Taobao

#39

Post by not_that_noob » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

Some of this is of course the Chinese government placing its thumb on the scales in favor of local businesses. It does this for a lot of reasons, but it's clear it happens.

However, compare the situation to other more open countries (e.g. India, Japan, Indonesia ) There are culture, social and language specific nuances that local entrepreneurs understand far better than outsiders, and that accounts for a significant portion of these copycat business success.

I think American business generally have a tough time accounting for the latter into account when they go overseas. IOW, not all of Jack Ma's success stems from the government being on his side.

Re: How Jack Ma took on eBay with Taobao

#40

Post by jdietrich » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

metalliqaz wrote: post #32

docker_up wrote: post #9

Competing against eBay is like saying you're competing in a 100m race against someone in a wheelchair. eBay has done nothing to make itself better in the last 15 years. New "features" routinely fail, and their APIs are a graveyard of dropped ideas. I hope Taobao expands to the US, eBay needs real competition, anyone working there should be embarrassed for themselves, more importantly the Directors and above.

I think in 2018 eBay has a lot of competition in the US. The bulk of the stuff on eBay are commercial sellers that can also use Amazon. When an average Joe might be selling his stuff, it tends to go on Facebook Marketplace these days, or Craigslist. The only thing they really have going for them is the auction format, but how often does THAT get used, even on eBay?

eBay own the long tail. Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist work fine if you're selling a lawnmower or a handbag, but they're hopeless if you're selling old baseball cards or an amateur radio transceiver or an Eames chair.