The Chinese giant is the undisputed king of Asian e-commerce, Alibaba, after having launched in the tablet market and smartphones, has decided to target search engines on the web. The president of the group, Jack Ma, declared himself "very interested" in the acquisition of Yahoo!. The news does not seem to sound new to the ears of the two companies, which have been discussing it for some time and have been held back by political rather than financial impasses. The irony is that six years ago Yahoo! began its climb within the Chinese group and holds 40% of the capital. If in the beginning the Californians were the biggest investors in Alibaba, now they are seriously at risk of ending up under its control.
The American portal is not experiencing a happy period and many believe that any take-over proposal could be interesting for the company. Ma's strategy appears to be to increase his control within Yahoo! which, in turn, has been looking for new plans for the future since, last September, he fired its chief executive officer, Carol Bartz, for which he has not yet found a replacement.
However, the search engine has also attracted other companies, including the private-equity Silver Lake, which a few weeks ago had proposed its offer to Yahoo!. But to no avail.
