Video streaming and mobile search are the two latest additions to Alibaba’s arsenal of products, as the Chinese ecommerce company aggressively challenges its rivals ahead of a blockbuster US public offering it could file for as early as this week.
Yesterday the Hangzhou-based company launched a new mobile search engine in a joint venture with UCWeb, a group that makes a popular mobile browser. Alibaba also announced that it will purchase a 20 per cent stake in China’s largest video hosting site, Youku Tudou, for $1.22bn.
Both moves are aimed at competing with rivals Baidu and Tencent and buttressing Alibaba’s presence in areas of the internet that it has not dominated to the same extent as China’s ecommerce market.