Shareholding Conflicts Drive Yahoo out of China
开篇：润墨网以专业的文秘视角，为您筛选了一篇Shareholding Conflicts Drive Yahoo out of China范文，如需获取更多写作素材，在线客服老师一对一协助。欢迎您的阅读与分享！
Eight years ago， when Jerry Yang shook hands with Ma Yun at the ceremony of the initiation of cooperation between yahoo and Alibaba， he never expected that Yahoo could become an empty shell in China like today.
As an 18-year-old Internet brand， Yahoo had great influences over China’s Internet world. In March 1998， Zhang Chaoyang， who had been back to China and run an Internet company for three years， turned his company’s name into . He told the investors that he wanted to make a Yahoo in China. Two months later， Yahoo opened the Chinese version of its website， the 13th non-English website of Yahoo. At that time， and were sill in its infant period. In 2004， it acquired ， a website that provides links to other major websites， making itself connect with Zhou Hongwei， who now runs the famous Qihu 360. In 2005， Yahoo finally joined hands with Alibaba， a commercial website managed by Ma Yun.
But now， Yahoo has become an old and sick giant. When busy with the layoffs and business adjustment， it could spare no time looking after its business in China. Actually， from 2005 to now， Yahoo China’s business was emptied bit by bit by none other than its partner Alibaba. Presently， all it has in China is its name Yahoo.
The Dying Yahoo
On August 31， 2013， Ajun （alias） who was one of the first Internet users in China and a loyal fan of Yahoo surprisingly found that Yahoo China’s announcement about stopping the business of News and Community Service when he opened the website of Yahoo china. According to the announcement， the original team of Yahoo China in charge of the News and Community Service has been shifted to the Public Welfare project of Alibaba.
Prior to that， Yahoo China stopped the function of the email ending with .cn in April. From then on Yahoo began to dismember itself in China.
An official announcement from Alibaba says that the closure of Yahoo Mail and Yahoo News in China is related with the stock repurchase agreement signed between Alibaba and Yahoo in 2012. According to the agreement， Alibaba spent US$7.1 billion buying back half of its shares held by Yahoo， which accounts for 20% of its total shares. In addition， Alibaba can only possess the benefits of Yahoo’s brand for less than four years. But in Ajun’s opinion， Alibaba should not close Yahoo Mail and Yahoo News so early in consideration of the cost.
Some practitioners even blame Ma Yun for the current doom of Yahoo. After taking over Yahoo China eight years ago， Yahoo China’s business structure was changed several times and its talents continuously moved to Alibaba. One of the IT experts says that Yahoo China had no long-term viewpoints and stable strategies. It only functioned as the accessory of Alibaba’s expansion of business. This is the biggest reason for Yahoo China’s fall and Ma Yun is the one to blame.
Xie Wen， a famous Internet reviewer， once worked as the President of Yahoo China in October 2006， but he only stayed in that position for one month before a blitz resignation. He says that he left Yahoo China because of the contradictions with others concerning the development strategies. And Ma Yun never gave Yahoo China a clear strategy or positioning.
In the past eight years， Ma Yun made several surgeries to Yahoo China’s business and gradually let Alibaba absorb the core business of Yahoo China.
The first one is the search business. At the end of 2005， Ma Yun， who just took over Yahoo China， made a grand reform to Yahoo China. He cut off the wireless and ads business， as well as the search engine “Yisou” left by Zhou Hongwei.
As of January 2007， Ma Yun started a big project， trying to transform Yahoo China from a news portal website to a website with the business of searching for enterprises’ yellow pages. However， one year later， Ma Yun abolished the original business of New Media， Search and Communication of Yahoo China. He moved Zhang Yifen， former vice president of Yahoo China’s search business into Taobao， a C2C website under his Ali Group， and upgraded the search engine as a strategic business of Ali Group.
At the end of 2007， Alibaba launched the advertising tech platform named Alimama， whose technology team was based on the original technology team of Yahoo China.
At the beginning of 2009， Ma Yun broke ties with and decided to turn his search engine into a universal scope. Once again he chose to draw the life force of Yahoo China. In September 2009， Aliyun was founded and also targeted the Yahoo China’s technology team as its best talent source. When Yitao was founded in 2011， the original technology team of Yahoo China’s search engine was almost completely moved to Ali Group.
When Ma Yun was busy emptying Yahoo China’s search engine business， he never let go of Yahoo China’s social media products. In June 2008， Ma Yun began to integrate and transform Yahoo China’s ， turning it into a local community service website. In addition， he closed several other Yahoo’s social websites， such as 3721 and SNS Community. Unsurprisingly， he moved the original teams to Taobao. In August 2009， Ma Yun integrated into Taobao. With all specific functions removed， Yahoo China could do nothing but turn back to its news business.
As for the number of employees， in August 2005， Yahoo had over 600 employees in China， but not it only has fewer than 200 employees. Apart from its original team working for Yahoo Mail， the rest employees are working as editors of news， finance and marketing.
It seems that Ma Yun was the nemesis for Yahoo China， but Xie Wen believes that Yahoo China’s current predicament is not caused by Ma Yun. In his opinion， Ma Yun was in an awkward position after accepting the investment from Yahoo， and he had no spare time to look after Yahoo China.
The story should date back to August 2005 when Yahoo spent US$1 billion acquiring 40% shares of Alibaba. Xie Wen says that most of the investment was not used for the development of Alibaba； instead， it was used for the original shareholders to cash in. But this deal turned Alibaba into Yahoo’s subsidiary company， which was a hidden threat for Alibaba’s future development.
Ma Yun’s Problems
In Xie Wen’s opinion， Ma Yun accepted the investment from Yahoo because the Alibaba’s shareholders wanted to quit as Alibaba’s B2B business could not go public in a short while and bring the capital they wanted. In addition， Ma Yun also hopes to make use of Yahoo’s advantages in portal website and search engine to get into the mainstream Internet business of China.
Moreover， the investment from Yahoo could bring a great force to Alibaba， which can promote the development of Alibaba’s B2B business.
Ma Yun once said that Alibaba has four sons. The eldest one is B2B， who needs to feed the second eldest and third eldest boys， who are Taobao and Alipay. These two boys work together to defend eBay and other outsiders. Now the youngest one has come. He is Yahoo China’s search engine business， which can provide a lot of help.
But Ma Yun is not a father that can take care of every boy equally. Ali’s gene is with the service instead of technology. In the past several years， Alibaba did not gain too much a victory no matter in the cooperation with Sogou or in developing self-owned search engine based on Yahoo’s team.
If there were no conflicts between Ali Group and Yahoo in the shareholding rights， Yahoo China is a good pawn.
Xie Wen believes that the strategies he proposed during the presidency of Yahoo China is fine despite being venturous. He says that if Yahoo China firmly followed the development of Web 2.0 from the end of 2006. Alibaba will not be busy contending for the projects of social media with Baidu and 360， or spend US$586 million investing in Sina Weibo at present.
According to Xie Wen， his current idea was to build a user platform as the bridge between Alibaba’s B2C business and Taobao’s C2C business. The platform is used to accumulate customers. Figuratively， the B2B is the CBD in the real world while C2C is like a wholesale market. What Yahoo China needs to do is make use of the accounts of Yahoo Mail to build a platform that can connect different users together， like a converter between the CBD and wholesale market. An anonymous insider from Yahoo China says that the disputes over the shareholding rights between Ali Group and Yahoo kept Ma Yun in check， forcing him not to put too many efforts in Yahoo China in the fear that his efforts in Yahoo China might turn out to be the fruits gained by Yahoo.