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August 8, 2005

Yahoo Looks to Buy Chinese E-Commerce Company

Fortune and the New York Times both have bits today on speculation that Yahoo may be in talks to purchase a 35% stake in Alibaba.com, China's largest e-commerce comapany.

The Chinese gold rush continues. From the NYT:

Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, eBay and Amazon.com are scrambling to invest money or find strategic partners in China, where there are an estimated 100 million Internet users amid a population of 1.3 billion. By some forecasts, China will overtake America with the largest number of Web surfers as early as 2010.

In the last few years, most of the large American Internet companies have come here to cut deals: Amazon.com acquired China's largest online bookseller, Joyo.com, for $75 million; eBay bought the Chinese auction site Eachnet for $180 million; and Yahoo purchased the Chinese search engine 3721.

Fortune says the 35% stake will likely run Yahoo 1 billion USD, making it the " largest investment by a foreign company in China's Internet industry."

Seems like China's where the money is. If you're looking to get an early foothold for your business, you might want to start by purging your web site copy of "undesirable phrases."

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