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China's Alibaba Interested In Buying Yahoo
jfruhlinger writes "Alibaba is a company that most Americans probably haven't heard of, but it's a hugely important Internet player in China, owning the Yahoo! China site as well as a host of other marketplace Websites. It's 40 percent owned by Yahoo, but now, in what seems a bit like a snake eating its own tail, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma has declared his interest in buying the embattled Internet portal outright." The San Francisco Chronicle has a Bloomberg News article with more details; they report that Alibaba is actually one of three parties looking into a joint bid for Yahoo, the others being the equity firm Silver Lake and Russian tech investor Digital Sky Technologies.
they report that Alibaba is actually one of three parties looking into a joint bid for Yahoo, the others being the equity firm Silver Lake and Russian tech investor Digital Sky Technologies.
So how's the joke supposed to go now? "In capitalist Russia, Chinese employee buys YAHOO!"?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Alibaba's been interested in buying back the Yahoo-owned portion of the company for a while, and with Yahoo's current stock price and the success of Alibaba, just buying Yahoo might be a reasonably cost-effective way to buy itself back.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Alibaba's main business is to try to connect no-name chinese manufacturers with distributors elsewhere. The site is garbage. If you thoughtYahoo was bad before... *shudder*
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Didn't Jack Ma try to dupe Yahoo and Softbank by transferring Alipay to himself for free? The guy is a swindler. Silver Lake and DST are better off leaving him out of any deal.
I noticed several brand names I associate with "America" are now owned by some one else, I wonder if selling off Yahoo would the loss of all the American jobs hired there.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/08/american-brands-in-foreig_n_755900.html#s152955&title=Budweiser
But hey what's in a name right.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
...when the Chinese buy Google or Microsoft. Yahoo is dead in the water anyway.
Of course the ironic thing is that China absolutely forbids any foreign company from owning any decent % of a Chinese internet firm, but they seem to have no qualms with a Chinese firm buys a foreign internet firm. Sort of like how all protectionism is bad according to Hu Jintao, except for Chinese protectionism of course which is good and despite the fact that he criticizes other countries' trade policy, said Chinese protectionism should not be criticized by anyone else.
Monstar L
Nothing a few bribes or lobbyists won't fix.
If the RIAA/MPAA have proven anything, The US government is for sale to the highest bidder.
The "Occupy Wall Street" thing might change things but only if they go totally "muslim spring".
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Strangely just before this story broke I was wondering why Yahoo comment posts seemed to be overrun with trolls (I'll avoid why type of trolls, since it isn't relevant to my question).
It makes me wonder. Can a site be brought down by trolls, or is it that a dying site is simply the natural habitat for trolls? Comments?
Don't think that them getting Yahoo is a good idea.
but I'm not quite sure for whom. Let's just say everybody.
The first thought that hit me was:
If Yahoo becomes a fully Chinese owned company, do I really want to keep using my @yahoo.com address for email . . . . .
About 10 years ago I was building my own audio gear and I needed a bunch of PC board mount RCA jacks. I wanted high quality and the only ones I could find we either junk or $25+ EACH. After digging around onthe web I found a Chinese company called Jim Rich Precision that looked like they had some promising stuff. I sent them an email and found some excellent jacks for $1.86 each. So I ordered 100 with an international money order. Two weeks later I got a large padded envelope with 100 excellent RCA jacks.
If Alibaba can facilitate these types of transactions, more power to them!
How are they at all relevant anymore?
OK, I like flickr.
And I guess some people still use yahoo groups. old people
looks like half the services they used to provide are defunct
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"The U.S. will not allow such a sale to proceed."
+5 Funny!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The only thing I use Yahoo for now is the sports page. Will it now read Ping-Pong, Figure Skating, Judo, Other?
...that is Chine does it, it is "self-interest", yet if we do it, it is "protectionism"? Why the double standard from you?
Alibaba, and a number of other sites like them, are horrible to do business with. Yes, it can be done. However even contacting the 'gold member' sellers that are supposed to have factories and company physically checked by alibaba often leads to failures to get the same offers they list on the site. If you can't find someone that will use an escrow, you ARE going to get ripped off. If you want a standard commodity then that's doable. If you want something tech oriented it can be a nightmare.
I recently was looking for a specific product and tried to find a seller on alibaba, newer-ish tech product. I found a valid looking gold member vendor, thought things were good, wired money... and never heard from the people again. So I wrote that off as me being stupid and not using an escrow. I found a few dozen companies that were all gold member rated (A paid service of Alibaba to verify the seller) and contacted them. My demands were simple, I wanted the listed minimum order and wanted to use the escrow which their listing also said they would do. Then a funny thing happened, I started getting 2 or 3 times as many emails back than I sent. Most from domains that had only been registered in the past few months, but they had my original RFQ information. None of the original companies responded, I can only imagine they're legit "fronts" to get the gold member star and employees either outright divert RFQs to another sister company, or do it without management knowing. I spent hours and could not find a single one that would do an escrow so I knew I'd be screwed. Thinking it was me, I went to a friend who is fluent in chinese and works in the tech industry and is living overseas. His advice was the service attracts those who think profit at all possibilities and has no qualms about outright defrauding the customer. In a nutshell it's an international craigslist with no buyer protection and more than likely you will get screwed.
The one place that may work is the aliexpress. It's a store front with multiple vendors and alibaba itself handles the transactions, and can pay with credit card. That does give you some buyer protection but pricing is nowhere near as attractice as the normal alibaba
I thought Alibaba was one of the Arabian Knights, and he had 40 thieves.
I think history speaks for itself. You don't want a Russian, Arab or Chinese buyer for your personal email account. Better say goodbye to privacy.
Did someone say... HOSTS files?
Back in 1999? We ordered a 55 gal drum of ketamine off of alibaba for $1000. Received it just fine, passed customs declared as glucose based bath salts. Madison WI was rolling in the Special K for a few years, and suffice it to say that this worked out to be VERY profitable for us.
Ali Baba is from 1,001 Nights (I think). We got to know about them thru Spain (under Arab domination for 7 centuries) (I think).
Ok, this is 2011, globalization, yadda, yadda... but I'd like to know if these classic works somehow got to be known inside China (and how?)
Just out of curiosity...
They are the tide of spam flavored chaff that occludes the delicious wheat of well sourced parts. Yeah these switches look great, but I don't really want to buy 10,000, pay in advance, and then deal with a 6-8 week lead time (and that's if they prioritize your order)
Dealing with the Chinese is painful at the best of times, having google return 100 pages of results from Alibaba (and similar) when your looking for a specific part is like desperately looking for a dentist to have a tooth pulled, and finding a city full of men with hammers offering to smash the whole lot out if you pay them cash up front.
....that Jerry Yang could have taken all those billions from MS and his shareholders would have been happy. Yahoo's stock price hasn't ever recovered....Yahoo's usage has been going down...and if a Chinese company buys it, expect even more users to abandon Yahoo.
Way to go Jerry!