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.”