Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

notatoad

online payments ---- google wallet

cloud services ---- google cloud platform

mobile apps ---- google play

mobile OS ---- android

maps and nav ---- google maps

physical retail ---- ? no google product

shopping deals ---- google offers

cloud storage ---- google drive

instant messaging ---- google hangouts

car service ---- uber (via google ventures)

c2c ecommerce ---- ? no google product

travel booking ---- google flights

b2c ecommerce ---- ? no google product

e-learning ---- ? no google product

social media ---- google+

music streaming ---- google play music (all access)

video streaming ---- youtube / google play movies

money market ---- ? no google product

all the western companies you'd have to combine to cover alibaba's markets would seem to me to be google, and maybe one or two others. i included uber because i know about that one, you could probably fill in a few more gaps with other google ventures companies.

View on HN

It's also about the scale. Most of their services are top competitors in the market. For example, Alipay, or 支付宝, is the de facto online payment service in China. As far as I know, I cannot imagine another company which provides similar service in China. Part of the reason is the government regulation.

The thing I wonder about their status as a top competitor: how different would their status be in a less restrictive market?

How does Alipay's user experience compare to Paypal's? Is it the lack of competition that has enabled them to expand their reach so widely (by not having to focus so much effort on each venture)? For example, the experience of shopping on AliExpress is (imo) sub-par when compared to most Western online shopping experiences I've had (Amazon, Zappos, and even smaller retailers).

I don't know a whole ton about the Eastern market to be honest, so I'm open to being educated.

My experience: using paypal is so confusing for me, compared to alipay. And ebay makes you uncomfortable and doubting your purchase decision more than taobao.

I think it partially explains Alibaba's success in China. how you do shopping and paying is very much dependent on the "tradition" and regulation environment, and a local company can optimize that better than a global one.

Aliexpress is a mess though, i agree with that. But I think the language barrier faced by the shop owners there may be the biggest problem.

Fraud is so rampant, that all of Paypal's competitors were either more worrisome or got defrauded to death. Paypal found the very narrow area where you can be careful enough to be profitable without chasing away all of your customers.

see my reply to 'dengnan. Alipay has users' trust and to them it isn't a terrible experience. Alipay is a bit different than Paypal in the way it integrates with your Taobao purchases. Alipay, at least for Taobao purchases, acts as an escrow agent and is or at least was strongly aligned with the buyer. Paypal has/had a history of generally siding with buyer grievances but the mechanisms of this trust is different enough that Alipay's solution is tailored to the problem effectively.

To your question "Is it the lack of competition..." I would say this is not the case. There has been plenty of competition. Alipay grew its adoption on its integration with Taobao in similar ways as PayPal was integrated with eBay.

In fairness the scale goes the other way too - some of these are stated to be quite minor stakes in the article while Google fully own everything mentioned by the parent (except Uber, but Lyft is an example Alibaba don't own outright)

Amazon also comes very close to checking all the boxes.

For e-learning, there's Google Helpouts. https://helpouts.google.com/

Google is extremely invested in education, recently they announced Google Apps for eductation: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/education/

They also contributed a pile of money to EdX. Those are 2 examples off the top of my head

Depending on your deffinition of e-learning Google Classroom may provide what you need. http://www.google.com/edu/classroom/

You can also include the best buy google kiosks as physical retail.

Google have also quietly launched a global sourcing search engine, which covers most of the core features of Alibaba's main site: https://www.google.com/shopping/suppliers/

Google just integrated Uber ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com