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"NOTE: I'm not posting verbatim. It's in the first person because it's easier for me to write that way ;)Speaker: Jack Ma (Yahoo!/Alibaba)\nPositions: CEO Yahoo! China, CEO/Founder of Alibaba\nModerator: Chris ShermanTell us about Yahoo! China.\nYahoo! has been in China for 8 years but we still needed to stabilize the management team and we did that. We\u2019re positioning Yahoo! China/Alibaba to help businesses go online (everyone\u2019s clapping! Jack Ma\u2019s obviously a celebrity in China). When we took over, development of SE technology should be fast. I didn\u2019t change a lot. Yahoo.com.cn acquisition. SE is a tool. It should serve Alibaba users. In ecommerce we lack SE. We took over Yahoo! believing that. Do we develop portal? Or do we develop SE? SE is a very important support to e-commerce. Well we still have 95 years to do it, if we can\u2019t do it this year or next year.What have you done with Yahoo\u2019s investment.\nThere\u2019s a lot of gossip. The truth is $750 million out of the $1 billion given to Alibaba was either spent or reinvested. We want to increase spending in R&amp;D and continue developing more products for vertical markets, markets like the proxy server market which we estimate to be worth RMB 10 billion.Is competition good?\nWe were once compared with eBay: eBay is a shark in Pacific Ocean and Alibaba is a crocodile in the Yangtze River. Competition is not the same as a battle. In battles, one has to die, only must survive. That is not competition. If they want to compete with us, I don\u2019t have a problem. I\u2019m not afraid of anyone (thunderous clapping here). In 3-5 years, we will change the rules of the game. We don\u2019t need to follow Google or Baidu\u2019s rules. We will make our own rules.What unique products will you offer?\nWe\u2019ll roll out products that are really geared for the Chinese market. Search engine technology today is geared for US markets and supports US culture. I would be better to have a customized solution for the 120 million Chinese netizens.In 5 years, you said you\u2019ll be strong enough to challenge Microsoft.\nMicrosoft, Google, Baidu are all big companies. But any company that\u2019s been in business for 6 years (Alibaba) should be respected. Microsoft is a well known company and I respect them. I respect eBay the most. But unlike the others, Alibaba is a young kid that can still afford to grow. We\u2019re everywhere. We\u2019ve got 120 million small-medium enterprises (SMEs) using our service. What\u2019s to prevent us from offering desktop software to them? If Microsoft can offer software to them, so can we. We\u2019re all good friends. I will learn a lot from them. But they will also learn from us.What\u2019s in store for us from Yahoo! Alibaba.\nIn 3 years, e-commerce development will still be at the center of our strategy. We shouldn\u2019t be following fads. I will not follow Google or Baidu. I will stick to what I\u2019m doing. No fads. Online gaming? No way, won\u2019t let my son play it."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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