Word: maing
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...welcome her and the eBay team to China, and with this Yahoo! deal, we decided to give them a nice big welcome gift," Ma says puckishly. The move instantly transformed the pivotal fight for the e-commerce market in China into a high-profile showdown between two of the most successful companies of the Internet age. "The competition [for the China market] will be fierce, no doubt about it," says Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, who has been friends with Ma for years...
...Ma says he and Yang started talking seriously about a deal in May. The key to it, Ma says, is that it gives Alibaba a strong position in four growth segments: business to business, consumer sales, online payments and now, with Yahoo!, search. "When we started Taobao, even our own chief technology officer said, 'Jack, you are crazy. Don't forget eBay.' But we passed eBay in China in just two years." Whitman, for her part, could not have been surprised by Yahoo!'s entrance into China. "Given how quickly the Internet and e-commerce market is exploding in China...
...eBay's dominance of the next great e-commerce market has turned out to be anything but a layup. Even before the massive capital infusion from Yahoo!, Alibaba-Taobao was making life unexpectedly difficult for Whitman & Co. Ma, 40, is an English teacher turned Internet pioneer in China, where he started a company that provided basic information about Chinese industrial companies on the Web back in the mid-1990s. In 1999, he launched Alibaba, a business-to-business site that became profitable in 2002 and last year did about $70 million in sales. In 2003, he started Taobao?"searching...
...buses in Shanghai and other metro areas, as are its television commercials and online ads as well as other, quirkier promotions. At many popular karaoke bars in Shanghai, for example, customers get an hour of singing and drinking for free if they register as eBay users. The brash Ma mocks these efforts, claiming he canceled his marketing budget in the first half of this year when he discovered how much eBay was spending, figuring that "their ads were just expanding the e-commerce pie for everybody...
Whitman knows Taobao doesn't charge sellers to list items on its site, but that won't be the case next year, as Ma acknowledges. eBay believes that will be a game changer, even if the alliance with Yahoo! makes Taobao's pockets that much deeper. But a link with Yahoo! gives Ma the capital and technology he needs to battle eBay on its terms. "Meg made a big mistake coming here," he says with a smile. "I respect her for doing so, but the chief commander shouldn't be at the front line with the troops. It just causes...