Yahoo has competition in its reported bid to invest in one of China's largest online auction marketplaces. The Wall Street Journal reports that online auction site Alibaba is in talks with other companies besides Yahoo about a possible investment.

Speculation has heated up since a Forbes article first reported Sunday that Yahoo is in talks to acquire a 35% stake of Alibaba for almost $1 billion (http://digbig.com/4eegm). Alibaba competes with eBay in China with its C2C auction marketplace TaoBao and AliPay online payment service, and it operates the Alibaba B2B marketplace.

Alibaba had been seemingly coexisting with eBay, whose Powersellers use Alibaba to source goods to resell on eBay.com. That is, until the Spring, when eBay told Alibaba it could not exhibit at its annual eBay Live gathering after all. Alibaba showed up anyway and gave presentations to sellers in a hotel suite, and its bright orange bags, given away on the streets outside the convention center, could be seen everywhere throughout the 3-day event in San Jose.

eBay continues to step up its efforts in China, saying the country could be eBay's largest local market in a five to 10 year period, and other Internet companies have joined the race to win China's cyberspace. Chinese search-engine company Baidu's spectacular IPO on the NASDAQ exchange last week likely whetted investors' appetite for more Chinese.

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