All the Western companies you’d have to combine to get something like Alibaba
I love this article. Despite the multitudes of news sources telling us about how commerce is now global and business is no longer tied to a place and the internet is changing the world, there is still an <i>ocean</i> of enterprises of which we US-based-or-english-speaking technologists are ignorant.<p>Take a moment to think about this: Alibaba is a huge company, growing in an absolutely enormous market, providing a pile of services, and most American technologists know nothing about it. Expand this thinking to countries: there are markets that are only just beginning to enjoy the degree of technological luxury the US and Europe enjoys. Who will serve them? These are people just like us, they have needs and desires much like ours. Who will satisfy them?<p>If you're an entrepreneur, there are millions if not billions of people who are on the cusp of becoming your target market, and the dominant technological discourse and journalistic coverage gives you no insight into the market they occupy. Not the languages they speak, not the companies who would be your competitors, not the cultural differences that would make selling difficult. Nothing.<p>I hope this article opens peoples' eyes to the fact that the US-based-or-english-speaking countries are soon going to be a relatively small portion of the world. We need news sources like this to practice the globalization sermon they all preach.