Alibaba issued a press release announcing it is "poised to take on eBay" and is the focus of Forbes magazine's lead article in this month's issue. Alibaba calls itself "the world's largest global business-to-business ecommerce marketplace." It says its consumer marketplace Taobao.com has surpassed eBay's China website in just two years. Alibaba sites trade between 220 countries and territories across 27 industries.

"With 1.2 million registered members, http://www.Alibaba.com garners almost 50% of its business from North America and Europe. The company also operates China's leading B2B domestic trade site for SME's with 4.8 million registered members; China's leading free C2C domestic auctions site Taobao.com with 4.5 million registered members and AliPay, a proprietary online payment platform utilized by Alibaba.com and Taobao backed by China's four largest banks."

Alibaba was founded in 1999 by entrepreneur Jack Ma and is based in Hangzhou, eastern China. It has over 2,000 employees, 13 regional sales offices across China and other offices in Hong Kong, Silicon Valley, Geneva, Shanghai and Beijing.