eBay to pull out of Japan

In a rare defeat for eBay, the online trading leader has announced that it will pull out of Japan, even as the company’s international expansion continues with the purchase of a Taiwanese auction site. eBay entered the Japanese market in 2000, and never got close to Yahoo! Japan, which is the country’s No 1 player in online auctions.

A spokesman for the company reiterated that eBay would continue its Japanese operations once conditions were more favourable.