The announcement of Yahoo closing its office in Beijing symbolizes the end of an era. It reminds us how difficult it is for Western businesses to enter and be successful in Asian market, especially in China.

Amazon is another one of those very popular Western corporations, which have been struggling to put steady feet on the ground in Chinese market. Interestingly, it seems that they’ve switched the tactics, and decided to be a part of Alibaba’s shopping mall site (tmall.com), which is their biggest competitor in China. You can see Amazon’s online shop within Tmall.com here: Amazon.tmall.com

I think this is a smart way for Amazon China to increase a customer base in Chinese market. The similar tactics are used by the search engines and portal sites in US, too. While they are competitors in the search engine market, Yahoo, Ask and other search engines optimize their content to be visible in Google’s search results. If Yahoo China had considered to partner with Baidu or Qihoo, they may not had to close the Beijing office.