The CEO of Alibaba, a central figure in China and the nascent search/ecommerce wars there, is one fun fellow to watch. His recent deal with Yahoo has redoubled Ma’s presence in China. Read this Forbes piece for more. From it:
Ma isn’t content to dominate China’s auctions and e-mail. He wants the third point of the Internet triumvirate, too: search. The CEO depicted an almost disarmingly simple strategy: “We win eBay, buy Yahoo! and stop Google. That is for fun. Competition is for fun.”
Geography and/or geopolitics apparently loom large in Ma’s worldview. He told reporters that while Google (nasdaq: GOOG – news – people ) and Yahoo! dominate Europe and the U.S., neither is in a position to rule Asia.
“I call them sharks in the ocean. We are crocodiles in the Yangtze River. If we fight in the Yangtze River, we have more chances than they have.”
in america, you need good PR with the tech elite to win the market. in china, you need good PR with the politicians. anything shy of $$, gifts, and women will surely be frowned upon. that is one thing american entrepreneurs will never understand.
the secret to winning the Chinese market is to win over the young people. the secret to winning over young people is to offer the best damn dating service the world has ever seen. Chinese people are especially interested in scandals in the movie bizz, tabloids, and petty stuff that happens in society. anyone interested in understanding the Chinese psyche should definitely look into the wild success that is the Apple Daily.
http://www.appledaily.com.tw/News/index.cfm
taiwan’s MSN Match.com and MSN Today surely understand this much. i’m sure Ma does too.
Jack Ma gave the Chinese government the information they needed to track down a political dissident who was sent to prison for 10 years. This is Yahoo at it’s best. I for one will no longer use Yahoo as my search engine.