Last week Amazon relaunched its local Chinese website with a new name and a new URL. The last traces of Joyo, a Chinese web retailer Amazon bought 7 years ago, is gone.

The site, which was previously labeled “joyo Amazon” is now simply called Amazon, and it even has a new and spelling.  It’s difficult to convey in English, but the old name used a different phonetic translation of Amazon.  Clearly Amazon is using the change to mark the point where this local site became a true part of Amazon and not just a local sub.

Joyo was launched in 1999 and then sold to Amazon in 2004 as part of its drive to expand beyond the US.  Amazon has ten distribution centers across the nation, and it boats 4.3 million sq. ft of warehouse space. That’s a little under a third the size of Amazon’s US operations.

In other news, Amazon is reportedly in talks to bring the Kindle to China. (It’s actually available there already, but you will need to buy it via third-party importers.) Like all rumors of Kindle expansion, these need to be taken with a grain of salt. These types of negotiations don’t always work out.

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