

Alibaba I.P.O. May Unleash Global Fight Over Users - ASquare
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/technology/after-alibaba-ipo-us-web-giants-may-stop-ignoring-chinese-rivals.html

======
jobu
"The largest technology stock offering in history is looming, but few in
Silicon Valley seem to care."

Zero comments on this article after an hour on the front page of HN seems to
prove the author's point.

~~~
opendais
I doubt many people on HN check that frequently during the work day. I know I
generally only check a couple times.

I'd say the reason most don't care much is there is massive cultural
differences in the way the US and Chinese markets operate. Successful US
companies have failed to penetrate China and many probably expect the reverse
to be true as well.

How many people here buy from
[http://www.alibaba.com/](http://www.alibaba.com/) despite it being 15 years
old?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Amazon works well in china and we use it often (alibaba taobao also, but not
so much these days). Many internet companies that fail in china (Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube) do well in other open Chinese style markets (Taiwan, Hong
Kong, Singapore)...they are only failing in mainland because the government
doesn't allow them to operate. There is no such restriction for Chinese
companies wanting to operate in the west.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Is it true that the government doesn't allow them to operate? My understanding
is that, if these companies were to operate within China's laws and
regulations, particularly as they relate to censorship of user-generated
content, they would be allowed to operate.

Sina (a 'Chinese' internet company) was recently the target of regulatory
action (suspension of a key licence) because they fell foul of those
censorship laws. Action isn't targeted solely at non-Chinese companies.
However, non-Chinese companies are less likely to want to comply (either due
to the cost/complexity of doing so, or because to do so would be at odds with
their core mission).

As an example of a company with a different approach, look at LinkedIn, which
recently launched a Chinese interface to target mainland Chinese users.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The government doesn't acknowledge that the services are actually blocked in
China. If you ask your ISP why Facebook isn't available, they'll tell you "it
must be Facebook's fault." The government hasn't declared them illegal, so
understanding how to make them "legal" is quite impossible.

The government selectively cracksdown on Internet companies when it wants to
make a point, and turns blind eyes on others, arbitrarily, porn is quite
common in the China market and very available...and even necessary for these
companies to make a profit. They just choose one to slap on the wrists
occasionally to make sure they don't get out of control.

In contrast, you'll find less porn on Facebook, G+, and YouTube then you will
on RenRen, YouKu, Sina, and so on. Heck, WeChat is well known as the hookup
app (so my wife won't let me go near it). But then this is similar to how
prostitution is ubiquitous in the PRC vs. how it is very much underground in
the US.

How would a legalistic American company operate in such an environment? China
is not yet very much governed by rule of (impartial, fairly applied) law, so
it is just impossible to do much without being able to live in the grayness
(as most Chinese internet companies are able to do!).

~~~
jackvalentine
> WeChat is well known as the hookup app

Hah what? This is the first time I've heard this, so I asked a male, mainland
chinese friend, using Wechat itself. His reply:

"Ew nope,kinda of.but I think all the social media tool has this function of
hookup it really depends on the intention of users"

It's pretty much the default messaging tool for my social group in China.
Married people, university students, even a mid-50s government official. If
you're not on Wechat you're missing out!

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Depends on the area (wechat has geo broadcast features); in Beijing's sanlitun
it is mostly guys and girls looking for fun.

Also a lot of even educated professionals don't realize what is going on
around them. There is a lot of cognitive dissonance as well as successful
propaganda ("these western problems can't happen here") going around, but
entire huge subcultures that are out of control (like the mid-50s government
official with 5 mistresses).

~~~
jackvalentine
I think you're overselling it as a hookup app, I presume you're referring to
the 摇一摇 feature? In any case, it's a texting-first hookup-distant-third sort
of thing. Like my contact said, it depends on the intent of the user. I'm so
curious why your wife is so suspicious!

If I was going to point out a Chinese app for basically hookups and nothing
else, it'd be 陌陌。That thing is pure, 100% Tinder/Grindr.

~~~
rahimnathwani
I always thought 陌陌 was only a hookup app, but was recently told that it
started as a way to connect people with common interests (e.g. I could use it
to find nearby python users or nearby HN users.)

I'm scared to install it!

------
netcan
The Alibaba story touches on a bunch of interesting things.

1st, there is somethingto do with the definition of "startups" as used on this
site, techcrunch etc. Al lot of it is cultural-superficial.

Soylent, is creating a new product that one might find at a pharmacy. It's
startupiness is mostly it's cultural context: Kickstarter, Andreesson-
Horowtiz, change-the-world ambition, SV brashness. A similar company & product
coming out of Europe and selling in pharmacies and supplement stores probably
wouldn't register as a "startup" to most people.

I don't really know how to articulate this, so I suppose my thoughts are not
all that cohesive. I think there's something here.

A completely unrelated 2nd, are the "problems" Alibaba is solving. About 10
years, just out of college I was wring in ecommerce. I learning about
affiliate marketing & drop shipping. I talked to someone with an ecommerce
"store" where all items were being drop shipped and the site was being
populated by a feed. He wanted affiliates to drive all traffic to the site.

 _Joel Spolsky (2001)- Indeed during the recent dotcom mania a bunch of quack
business writers suggested that the company of the future would be totally
virtual -- just a trendy couple sipping Chardonnay in their living room
outsourcing everything._ \- I was one of the quacks.

I knew that between the factory door and a consumer was where most of the cost
(value add) is. Things got bought, sold, shipped, exported, warehoused again,
warehoused, wholesaled, retailed... It seemed that these virtual businesses
were part of an unstoppable economic change where the internet would automate
and eliminate most of the work between the consumer and the manufacturer.

I thought everything between manufacturers and consumers would melt into a
very thin layer of technology, RSS mostly. I mustn'd have been the only one
because a lot of the dark ages startups (2002-2005) seemed to be building
parts of this upcoming world. Product search engines, for example were
considered important.

It didn't happen, but it still might. A lot of the dotcom ideas were poorly
executed 10 years too early but ultimately decent ideas. Maybe this one was 30
years to early.

Alibaba is focused further down the manufacturing chain, where stuff actually
gets made. We know that all our stuff is made in China. We kind of assumed
that was a solved problem, trivial. Try to buy something on Alibaba and you
will find that international commerce is still a lot closer Marco Polo's days
than you might think.

Amazon has been working on the retail side of things for 20 years. Product
research, discovery, shipping, customer service. Every aspect of that has
turned out to be a bigger and more difficult problem that I would have
anticipated in 1999.

Alibaba is innovating mostly below the point that Amazon starts.

I think Alibaba is a big deal.

------
bckrasnow
I don't think you can get American users to trust Chinese companies with the
amount of spying that is done over there.

Though you could probably say that about American companies in Europe now as
well.

~~~
whoismua
I, for one, keep all my nuclear launch codes in an offline drive :-).

really, most US users better be worried about NSA and local PD, they can jail
you, China can't.

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mark_l_watson
I am skeptical that they will be able to crack the US markets. On the other
hand, Chinese companies will probably be big competitors in emerging markets
since they might also control the infrastructure.

~~~
reuwsaat
Lenovo.

------
reuwsaat
For all of those that have asked the question, "Why don't you trust Google
with your data?" Replace Google with Alibaba and you have your answer. Google
has set a dangerous precedent in in how much data it has asked users to
provide based on the assumption that their actions based their best intentions
would be the rule and not the exception. It was a matter of time.

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comlonq
I used this site for the first time last week. I now keep getting spammed by
suppliers that I never contacted.... nice

------
Stratoscope
A somewhat tangential question that I'm genuinely curious about: Would anyone
happen to know why the New York media always puts the periods in I.P.O. and
I.B.M. and presumably N.Y.T. too?

It's so different from what I'm accustomed to, and seems to definitely be a
New York thing. Everywhere else it would be IPO, IBM, and NYT.

So why does the N.Y. media do this?

