Baidu is at the critical point in this year. They have announced to build one of the biggest C2C (consumer-to-consumer) online trading platform, based on its search technologies. This move represented Baidu’s ambition to enter e-commerce market, resolve around the proposal that a search engine giant should diversify into several other areas and maximize the profits. While, they have established a strong market in China and the Chinese speaking community, this move is make a lot sense but C2C market doesn’t seem to be right choice for them. C2C market in China faced several obstacles, such as the problem of online payment, Chinese consumers’ habits, poor logistics systems, just to name a few. I wonder how they going to overcome all these obstacles and emerge as a new giant in C2C field as they had envisioned?

In the meantime, I also expect the IM product, still in Baidu’s lab will launch to the market shortly.