Taobao

On Thursday Alibaba Group said that it has reorganized its ecommerce business Taobao, largest ecommerce website in China. The business has been split into three separate services.

In Q1 of the year Taobao shared 70% of all online sales in China and it has been valued by Goldman Sachs at about $7 billion.

Effective from Thursday the decision splits the company into three services: search engine eTao, business-to-consumer website Taobao Mall and consumer-to-consumer website Taobao.com.

Gap Inc, a US apparel brand, opened its online store on China’s largest ecommerce market Taobao this week in a move to achieve savvy Chinese shoppers of a moderate income group.

Gap opened its store on Taobao Mall, in addition to such brands as Adidas AG, Levi Strauss & Co and Japan's Uniqlo, Taobao said in a statement.

Chief Executive David Wei leaves Alibaba.com Ltd along with Chief Operating Officer Elvis Lee on the grounds of being responsible for fraudulent activity by users of one of the company's platforms. The decision comes into effect immediately.

Taobao, a subsidiary of Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba Group launched its trial project to test a new search engine to compete with Baidu. The company launched the beta test of Etao past Saturday.

"Etao is a shopping search engine launched by Taobao and its in beta testing at the moment," a Taobao spokeswoman said in a statement on Tuesday.

Etao, www.etao.com, provides not only vertical search options for e-commerce, but also a comprehensive search engine powered by Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Largest online retailer in China Taobao.com is conducting experiments with a new shopping search engine called etao, a company spokesman reported. No other details were given by the Alibaba Group subsidiary about the new search engine. Meantime, analysts expect the move to bolster the company's position as the top online retail and auction site in China.

Taobao, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, has partnered with Wasu Media Internet Limited, a subsidiary of Wasu Digital Television Media Group, to jointly launch a digital products platform and interactive digital television shopping.

Taohua.com will offer single-stop sharing and purchase of video, e-books, music and other digital entertainment and educational products. Chinese consumers will be able to shop from home on the Wasu Television Taobao Mall via interactive digital television shopping technology, which allows selection of goods and services using their TV.

Taobao, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, and Yahoo! JAPAN have partnered to launch a conjoint initiative that will allow Chinese small businesses on Taobao to offer quality products via e-retail to consumers in Japan while enabling Japanese merchants on Yahoo! JAPAN Shopping to access increasingly sophisticated Chinese consumers.

China is one of the world's oldest civilizations and the oldest continuous civilization. China is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately one-fifth of the world's population. It has archaeological evidence dating back over 5,000 years, with one of the world's oldest written language systems, rich and specific culture, one of the oldest religion and amazing traditions.