Alibaba is the largest Chinese online trading company, being listed, since September 2014, on the New York Stock Exchange, which could place it among the top largest websites in the world, including Amazon, eBay, or Facebook.
Alibaba was founded in 1999 with an investment of 60,000 dollars. This amount is quite large for China, but the site's founder, named Jack Ma, managed to raise it from no less than 80 friends.
The specific feature of this site is mediating commercial relationships between exporters and importers from China and over 190 other countries worldwide. In other words, this is where demand meets supply, the buyer being able to compare and choose products not only based on qualities and technical specifications but also on the geographical area where the supplier is located. On alibaba.com, all technical characteristics, unit price, price calculation method (which includes the displayed price – for example, it may include transport to the buyer's doorstep, with all taxes included, including insurance), minimum order quantity, etc., are specified.
The company also owns two online shopping sites, taobao.com, the largest shopping site in China, and tmall.com, which offers products at affordable prices for middle-income Chinese people.
Alibaba also owns the Chinese equivalent of YouTube.com, called Youku Tudou, as well as a part of the Sina Weibo site, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
The company that owns this site has greatly expanded its scope of involvement, so now it is active not only online but also in cinema and football.
All this expansion is also reflected in the increase in the number of employees, from 18 people in 1999 to over 22,000 in 2014. The company is currently valued, according to some estimates, at 22 billion dollars.
The company's success is largely due to the huge number of internet users in China. Thus, there are over 600 million internet users in China, compared to the United States of America, which has 277 million users, and even the whole of Europe, where there are approximately 546 million users.
In addition, they took advantage of the explosion in the smartphone field, creating a special online platform for smartphones and tablets, aimed at facilitating the purchase of goods through these mobile devices.
The revenues of the alibaba.com site do not come, as is the case with other similar sites, from additional fees but from advertising. Annually, over 14.5 billion orders are completed (actually transacted) on this site.
