Alibaba and the 40% Interest
Site back and listen to a spellbinding tale of exotic lands, for I Scheherazade will enthrall you with stories of intrigue, riches and wonder. Our tale begins with a not-so-far-off-anymore land, a country once known as Qin. Many companies and inventors have heard of a cave of riches located there. The cave is full of magic and wealth beyond imagination. The cave opens with the words, “I will invest one billion dollars in a joint venture.”
In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m talking about Yahoo!’s revealed an investment in Alibaba.com, China’s largest e-commerce company.
After about a week or so of speculation, the two companies announced a strategic partnership in China. Yahoo! is paying a cool US$1 billion in cash (Scheherazade !) and will fold Yahoo! China into the new venture. For this, Yahoo! gets a 40% stake in the company.
One of the interesting things about Alibaba is that its international directory site serves mostly SMEs (prized the world over).
On that note, Google announced three Chinese AdWords resellers for Google China. They are : China Enterprise, China Source and Hotsales. According to an AP article, the three will extend AdWords’ Chinese reach into the China SME marketplace.
And on a completely unrelated note, John Battelle quashes the Meetro/IM Google acquisition rumor. Nonetheless, given that teens IM by 2-to-1 (Pew) over cell phone usage, Google will be back with an IM acquisition soon enough.
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Greg Sterling is managing editor of The Kelsey Group. He also leads The Kelsey Group’s the Interactive Local Media program, focusing on local search. Greg came to The Kelsey Group from TechTV’s “Working the Web,” the first national television show dedicated to e-business and the Internet.
