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Businesses China The Almighty Buck Technology

Here Comes the World's Biggest Shopping Spree -- Again (bloomberg.com) 38

A reader shares a report: On Nov. 11, China celebrates Singles Day, a holiday dedicated to the nation's unattached. It's also the world's largest shopping festival -- and a bonanza for internet giant Alibaba Group. Up to 500 million consumers will visit sites run by the company searching for discounts on items including Bordeaux wine, UGG boots, SUVs, and high-end Japanese toilets. Citigroup estimates that Alibaba's sales during this year's event could reach 158 billion yuan ($23.8 billion). For Alibaba, Singles Day will also be a demonstration of how far its cloud business has come in eight years. At the peak of activity, Alibaba's servers may be tasked with processing 175,000 transactions a second from its own sites. "It's the day when the largest amount of computing power is needed in China," says He Yunfei, a senior product manager for Alibaba Cloud. [...] Alibaba dominates the Chinese cloud -- in part because local regulators won't issue data center operating licenses to foreign companies, curtailing the China ambitions of Amazon.com and Microsoft, the No. 1 and No. 2 cloud providers globally.
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Here Comes the World's Biggest Shopping Spree -- Again

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  • It seems odd to wait to buy something until a holiday if you're single. If I was single, I'd just buy what I wanted when I wanted. :shrugs:
  • local regulators won't issue data center operating licenses to foreign companies

    It appears AliBaba (and other Chinese companies) have caught on to the American trick of using the government to guarantee their markets.

    • Hey, I'll happily bash the US any hour of the day, but giving them the credit for protectionism is really short-sighted.
      • by sehlat ( 180760 )

        1. I didn't think of it as bashing the US at all. After all, imitation IS the sincerest form of flattery.

        2. We didn't invent protectionism, but the US has found more ways to implement it than the British we threw out in 1776.

        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          You seem to suffer from a particularly distorted outlook. To be clear, US independence, the thieves who stole the country, then stole it from the thieves who sent thieves to steal it, all done in a particularly murderous fashion, not just the original theft but the follow up theft from the thieves who originated the theft, the proceeds of particularly murderous stealing. PS on the whole the thieves were fucking poms, people from England stealing from the English monarchy, after those poms stole the place fr

  • by genka ( 148122 ) on Friday November 10, 2017 @04:18PM (#55528181) Homepage Journal
    If you're planning to shop on Ali, keep it mind that the vendors there often raise prices prior to 11/11 and the real savings are slim or nonexistent.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      This is what I came in to comment for. Near all of them hike their prices then post a discount showing back down to the original price. Last year I saw some things were actually more expensive regardless. There is an add on for your browser that shows you price history. Chnprice

  • by Anonymous Coward

    There has been speculation over whether Alibaba Group will eventually buy Amazon or Ebay. It's vastly larger than Amazon and commands a larger share of the online shopping market, so it has the muscle to snap up smaller outlets like those 2 if it wants to expand and reduce its competition. The group has been acquiring other online brokers over time, so it's not without potentiality.

    Singles Day is certainly the largest shopping day and has been for some while, but Alibaba Group is huge anyway, with or with

    • AliExpress is cheaper sure, if you consider 4-8 week shipment times reasonable, and an equally slow "Direct-from-China return experience."

      For most cases, I'd rather pay a little more on Ebay or Amazon for 2-10 day shipment times. And a much more convenient return process.

      • by LesFerg ( 452838 )

        I'm usually quite happy to wait. Most of my Ali purchases are hobby related and I can plan ahead without urgency.
        When the local retailers here in NZ are charging up to 15 times the cost of a simple computer part, I feel it is becoming immoral to support them.

        There is a retailer association that goes stomping and shouting to the government about being threatened by online purchasing because we are not paying the goods and services tax (GST) which local retailers have to add to their prices, but the fact is

      • Maybe for people in the US, but in Canada where our Amazon has about nothing at double the US price, it is still better to order from China.
        With Fentanyl problem we have a 3 months delay now, but from AliExpress I select items with ePacket shipping, it is seen as "Xpresspost" here and it takes 1 or 2 week max before I get the item in hand, sometimes for a small $2 amount.

  • ... for IoT botnet?

  • 11/11 is also "Pocky Day [pocky.com]", because 11 11 looks like four of them.

  • Am I the only one that misread the title as "shooting spree"?

    I mean, it happens with such depressing regularity...

  • Big seller over there are $4k anatomically correct and life like female silicone dolls because for some odd reason there's way more males than females of marrying age. It's either that or turn gay. Lot of lonely guys in China.
  • I'm excited about another great year of Black Friday shopping! I mean, I already bought the pepper spray I'm going to use on other shoppers and everything! ;)

  • It is amazing a region as small as Bordeaux is able to supply that many China's singles in wine.

"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will." -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"

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