Alibaba.com is globally ranked 63 while within China its rank stands as 24. This domain was registered by Jack Ma in 1999.
In his own words, “One day I was in San Francisco in a coffee shop, and I was thinking Alibaba is a good name. And then a waitress came, and I said do you know about Alibaba? And she said yes. I said what do you know about Alibaba, and she said ‘Open Sesame.’ And I said yes, this is the name! Then I went onto the street and found 30 people and asked them, ‘Do you know Alilbaba’? People from India, people from Germany, people from Tokyo and China… They all knew about Alibaba. Alibaba — open sesame. Alibaba — 40 thieves. Alibaba is not a thief. Alibaba is a kind, smart business person, and he helped the village. So…easy to spell, and global know. Alibaba opens sesame for small- to medium-sized companies. We also registered the name AliMama, in case someone wants to marry us!”.
Alibaba.com has been more appealing domain name than Amazon.com was but ultimately Jack Ma made it biggest just because of his sterling faith in Internet. He said, “The first time I used the Internet, I touched the keyboard and I find ‘well, this is something I believe, it is something that is going to change the world and change China.”
Jack Ma’s faith in Internet and preparedness to use Chinese Government policies only business-wise helped a lot to make its IPO largest till date making Jack Ma the richest man in China and alibaba.com the biggest business that is a lot bigger than a sum total of India’s many largests.
It is amazing. In September 2014 alibaba.com started negotiating with snapdeal.com for entering into India’s market.