Yahoo Co-Founder Jerry Yang Explains Decision To Buy, Not Build, In China

Jerry Yang, the Yahoo co-founder who will have a seat on Alibaba’s board, talked to BusinessWeek’s Ron Elgin about the company’s China strategy. Yang described Yahoo’s earlier purchase of 3721 as the basis of a China search buisness but Alibaba gave the company the strongest local management possible — and a complete array of services. The B2B business will remain an Alibaba brand and Taobao will continue as the consumer auction site but all of the consumer internet products will be brnaded Yahoo. Said Yang, “They definitely feel that the Yahoo brand in China has not only global implications but a lot of resonance.”
It sounds like he doesn’t see Alibaba getting into the media business without a strong commerce angle. Yang: “Commerce is a root of what they do. … If you look at e-commerce as a category, that’s where the action is in China. There isn’t a very huge amount of media business in China.”

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