Yahoo! considering buying a stake in Chinese Alibaba

Yahoo! considering buying a stake in Chinese Alibaba

Reports in media claims that the search engine giant and the most popular web portal company Yahoo! is considering and is in talks to buy a stake in Alibaba.com. Alibaba is a Chinese business and consumer e-commerce site and the move is said to be brokered by Japanese investor Softbank Corp. this news is even more interesting consider Google has shown considerable interest in the Chinese search engine Baidu.com which recently filed for an IPO at the NASDAQ.

Media group Forbes.com has reported that the search engine company is contemplating paying as much as USD 1 Billion for a 35% stake in Alibaba.com. The company had cash revenue of $68 million last year, more than double the $30 million in 2003 and is largely invested in by Softbank. It was formed in the year 1999 during the dot com boom by an English teacher turned entrepreneur Jack Ma to enable a B2B transaction site for local Chinese producers and foreign buyers.

Interestingly, Softbank also happens to be the biggest shareholder from outside in the Yahoo! Reports says that they are the primary hand behind these reported talks between the two online giants in their own lands. Both the companies have yet not commented on these rumors though it is widely considered that coordination between these two companies can result in a group, which can give a tough fight to eBay Inc. in the Chinese market.