Baidu.com Inc. (NASDAQ : BIDU) and Ebay Inc. (NASDAQ : EBAY) announced today that they are forming a partnership. The details are still coming in but the main details are that Baidu will promote Ebay’s Chinese version of Paypal, Beibao, and that Baidu will be the exclusive text-based search advertising provider on the Eachnet auction site. This partnership is beneficial to both parties as it attempts to take on the Chinese market leader for auction sites, Alibaba.com which is partially owned by Yahoo Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd.
The online advertising on the Eachnet site will begin trials in the first-quarter 2007. eBay and Baidu have said they don’t expect this deal to have a material impact on their financial results. I have to beg to differ though since partnerships like this will always affect the finances of the companies involved. The markets seemed to take note of the deal as Baidu, for the second day in a row, was on the rise, up around 3.75% to 97.40/share, while eBay Inc was up 0.83% to 32.83/share.
Good partnership between eBay and Baidu, even though both stocks have both been stagnant since then. Any thoughts on how this partnership could take advantage on the next online auctions boom in China?