Alibaba.com
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the fictional character, see Ali Baba.
Alibaba.com "Global Trade starts here..." (Chinese: 阿里巴巴; pinyin: ā lǐ bā bā) is a Hangzhou-based e-commerce/e-auction company, founded in 1999 by Ma Yun (Jack Ma).
Their English-language website alibaba.com specializes in business-to-business trades, especially for international buyers trying to get into contact with Chinese sellers. The Chinese-language chinese.alibaba.com focuses on business-to-business trades within China while www.taobao.com is a consumer-to-consumer trade site for Chinese customers.
On August 11, 2005, Yahoo! announced that it would purchase a 40% stake in the company for US$1bn plus Yahoo!'s Chinese assets (worth about US $700M). Alibaba will take charge of Yahoo! China, and Alibaba's founder Jack Ma will remain.
As of January 2007, the Alibaba Group is made up of 5 companies:
1) Alibaba.com: English language global trade website serving small and medium-sized enterprises.
2) Taobao.com: The main competitor to eBay in China for on-line auctions. Currently Taobao has over 65% of the auction market.
3) Yahoo! China: Chinese search portal.
4) AliPay: main competitor to PayPal for on-line payments in China.
5) Alisoft: introduced Jan 2007, Alisoft provides web services to the Chinese SME marketplace.
