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China cracks down on big tech companies with new anti-monopoly measures
China is clamping down on big tech conglomerates by tightening its anti-monopoly guidelines for internet and digital payment services. The new rules effectively block companies from forcing sellers to choose between the leading online players, a common practice in the country, reports Reuters. The guidelines are aimed at Chinese heavyweights including e-commerce providers such as Alibaba Group’s Taobao and JD.com and mobile payment services like Ant Group’s Alipay or Tencent’s WeChat Pay.
India bans 'PUBG Mobile' and more than 100 other apps
Since June, India has banned 177 apps with ties to China.
Amazon needs to get a handle on its counterfeit problem
Chances are you wouldn't suspect that whatever you're buying from Amazon, whether it be clothing, sunglasses or a handbag, is fake. And, for the most part, that tends to true. But that doesn't mean you should trust that every product is legit. In fact, right now if you search for "Yeezys," a highly coveted pair of Adidas shoes, you'll get more than a thousand results that are clearly fake. Two dead giveaways are design flaws and an unlikely low price -- trust me, Adidas doesn't sell them for $20. The worst part is that some of them bear the seemingly trustworthy Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) label. But all that really means is that the company is acting as the middleman between you and the actual seller.
US continues to blacklist China’s eBay over counterfeit goods
Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba's counterfeit goods problem refuses to go away. Despite noting improvements on takedown efforts, the Office of the US Trade Representative has again blacklisted Alibaba's eBay-like Taobao shopping site.
Internet giant Alibaba crushes one-day online shopping record
If you needed evidence that internet shopping still has room to grow, you just got it. Chinese e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba has confirmed that its annual Singles' Day sales event racked up the equivalent of more than $25.3 billion in sales, easily setting a record for the most online purchases in one day. For context, Alibaba sold just short of $18 billion last year -- this year, the company surpassed that figure slightly past the halfway mark. The 2016 Cyber Monday sale was downright tiny by comparison, mustering 'just' $3.45 billion in the US.
Alibaba gave online shoppers a VR celebrity date
Alibaba really, really wants you to use its virtual reality shopping experience, and it's resorting to a clever tactic to lure you in: dream dates. The Chinese internet giant marked May 20th, a romantic pseudo-holiday, by giving Taobao mobile app users a virtual reality date with either famed actress Dilraba (if you were looking for a girlfriend) or the actor Yang Yang (if you wanted a boyfriend). If you had a mobile-friendly VR viewer and scanned in a QR code, your digital squeeze would help you wake up, make breakfast and otherwise keep you company. Think of it like Konami's augmented reality girlfriend app... just more immersive and private.
China smashes sales records during its version of Black Friday
In the US there's Black Friday, but in China, they get all their big online shopping discounts on November 11 aka "Singles Day" instead. As of 4:28am ET today, Alibaba's Tmall, the Chinese equivalent of Amazon, has already made over $11 billion which broke last year's record of $8.97 billion. As reminded by our friends over at TechCrunch, both numbers from that platform alone beat the entire US' online sales of last year's Thanksgiving and Black Friday combined. It's no wonder Alibaba could afford to hire Frank Underwood Kevin Spacey and James Bond Daniel Craig to kick off this year's party.
Alibaba hopes visual codes will fight counterfeit goods
As you may have heard, Alibaba has a problem with counterfeit goods among its merchants -- you may not know if that Gucci bag is fake until it's too late. The Chinese online shopping giant may have a way to fight these bogus wares, though. It's implementing Visualead's Dotless Visual Code to help you verify your purchases as soon as you get them home. All you do is scan the QR-like symbol using Alibaba's Taobao app, and it'll tell you if you bought the real deal. These codes only work once and require specially developed scanning software, so scammers can't simply rehash codes or write apps that claim their products are legit.
Drones are delivering tea in China
Hey, DHL: you're not the only one who can bring drone-based delivery to honest-to-goodness customers. Alibaba's online marketplace, Taobao, is running a real-world test that lets 450 people in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai order ginger tea and receive it from a UAV in less than an hour. The service will only be available from February 4th through February 6th, but it'll represent one of the first practical instances of delivery-by-drone in major urban areas. Sadly, you probably won't see something like this happen in the US for a while -- companies like Amazon are threatening to take their drone tests abroad because of government restrictions.
Alibaba IPO makes it worth $231 billion, more than Amazon and eBay combined
We'd heard that the US IPO for Chinese company Alibaba could be among the biggest ever, and it did not disappoint. Closing at a stock price of $93.89, it raised $21.8 billion for the company and is the biggest IPO in US history. According to Bloomberg, it could become the biggest ever (topping Agricultural Bank of China's $22 billion IPO in 2010) if underwriters make use of an option to buy more shares, which market observers expect they will. Now that Alibaba has joined the club of recent tech IPOs like Facebook and Twitter and it has cash to throw around, many wonder if it will start acquiring smaller companies the way its Silicon Valley rivals have lately. Despite being mostly unknown in the US Alibaba is massive in China, operating sales platforms described as similar to Amazon, eBay and Paypal, and Reuters says it controls more than 80 percent of online sales there. Jack Ma (pictured above) founded the company in his apartment in 1999 and is now China's richest man, personally worth some $18 billion as of market close, according to the Wall Street Journal. [Image credit: PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images]
China chooses Ubuntu for a national reference OS coming in April
China's government and people have historically been friendly toward Linux, although not quite on the level of a new deal with Canonical. The country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is teaming with Canonical to create Ubuntu Kylin, a variant of the regular Linux distribution that would serve as a reference point for local hardware and software developers. A Raring Ringtail-based build due this April should bring Chinese calendars, character input methods and quick access to relevant music services. Later Kylin releases should integrate Baidu mapping, mass transit information, Taobao shopping and a common slate of photo editing and system tools from WPS. The hope is to foster open source development in China as part of a five-year government growth plan -- and, we suspect, get away from closed operating systems that Americans control.
