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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!"?
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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'
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."
Well, Ali Baba did hang around with a bunch of thieves. If that doesn't set the alarm bells ringing I don't know what would.
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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
Don't think that them getting Yahoo is a good idea.
but I'm not quite sure for whom. Let's just say everybody.
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."
There are people who still use Yahoo Mail?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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
Ali Baba was actually the nemesis of the titular band of thieves. He stole from the cave in which they stored their gold by eavesdropping and learning the password ("open sesame").
His clever slave-girl managed to kill the thieves when they came in search of vengeance.
This is all off-topic, just noticed that you were clearly unfamiliar with anything other than the title of the story you referenced. Similar to claiming, "Indiana Jones's HQ is the Temple of Doom, after all, so we shouldn't be surprised that Jones Widget Corporation (based in Indiana) has poor hiring policies."
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.
Because this is an economic practice that only works when you're a developing country with a consumer base that foreign companies are drooling over to get access to. This practice will die once the Chinese market matures, because foreign companies will either be there already, or will have decided against entering it.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
In my defence I haven't heard/read/seen the story in well over 30 years. And accuracy would have been even more appropriate, since Ali Baba was both a thief (though not one of the 40, he just stole from them) and a slave owner, so fair call.
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