The owner of Yahoo China spent three-fourths of the $1 billion it received from Yahoo last summer on research & development and other projects.
One of the projects cited by Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, and reported on by Search Engine Roundtable from Ma’s keynote at SES China may involve a more Sino-centric approach to search in his country.
Ma commented on the need for unique products for the Chinese market:
We’ll roll out products that are really geared for the Chinese market. Search engine technology today is geared for US markets and supports US culture. It would be better to have a customized solution for the 120 million Chinese netizens.
As far as competition in other areas, like online auctions, Ma issued the “bring it on” kind of challenge he has made in the past. He is not afraid of eBay or Google, and in three years plans to play in the world of e-commerce.
Nor is Ma afraid of Microsoft, either. With 120 million small to medium enterprises using Alibaba, he made another observation about his firm and the tech titan:
What’s to prevent us from offering desktop software to them? If Microsoft can offer software to them, so can we. We’re all good friends. I will learn a lot from them. But they will also learn from us.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
