Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Yahoo and Alibaba “committed” to solving Alipay dispute

By
Yahoo Y logo
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Yahoo and Alibaba have tried to put a brave face on their dispute over the ownership of online payment service Alipay, releasing a terse one-sentence joint statement that the companies are “committed” to working out a solution and that “productive” negotiations are underway.

Yahoo owns a 43 percent stake in Alibaba, which—along with Yahoo’s stake in Yahoo Japan—has been one of the financial assets on which Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has been using to keep the company stable as it streamlines operations and refocusses on core businesses. However, Yahoo saw its stock take a broadside last week from the investment community when it disclosed that Alibaba had spun off its Alipay online payments service into a separate entity. Yahoo says it was informed about the move only at the end of March, and Alibaba’s board (of which Yahoo is a member) or shareholders never approved the deal. Alibaba says its board (of which Yahoo is a member) has been talking about spinning off Alipay for nearly two years.

Recommended Videos

The dispute highlights the increasingly antagonistic relationship between Alibaba Group CEO Jack Ma and Yahoo’s own outspoken CEO Carol Bartz. Although the companies have cooperated for years—and Bartz has repeatedly indicated Yahoo has no intention of letting go of its share of Alibaba—industry watchers speculate that spinning off Alipay into a separate entity may serve two purposes. One is the explicit reason Alibaba gave for the move: complying with Chinese regulations regarding foreign ownership of online payment companies. A second motive might be to give Alibaba a strong negotiating position with Yahoo, since the move means Alipay can’t use used as a chip between the companies.

From a business perspetive, Yahoo’s interest in Alibaba has proven a reasonable long-term strategy: where American Internet companies like Google have struggled to be competitive in the Chinese market, Yahoo has kept a solid footing in China through Alibaba. And where Yahoo saw its net income drop by 26 percent in its first quarter of this year, Alibaba.com (the group’s main entity) saw its income jump 37 percent. However, Yahoo hasn’t managed to avoid all the difficulties of conducting business in China: several Chinese bloggers and political activists have been imprisoned in part using information on their online activities turned over to Chinese authorities by Alibaba.

Topics
Geoff Duncan
Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
The HP Victus gaming PC with RTX 3060 has a $550 discount
The HP Victus 15L gaming PC in white.

Gamers don't need to spend more than $1,000 if they want to buy a new gaming PC because there are affordable options like the HP Victus 15L gaming desktop. From its original price of $1,400, you can get it for just $850 as HP has applied a $550 discount on this machine. However, you shouldn't delay your purchase because there's no assurance that the gaming PC will still be 39% off tomorrow. If you want to make sure that you get it for less than $1,000, you're going to have to complete the transaction for it within the day.

Why you should buy the HP Victus 15L gaming desktop
You shouldn't expect the HP Victus 15L gaming desktop to match the performance of the top-of-the-line models of the best gaming PCs, but it's surprisingly powerful for its cost. Inside it are the 13th-generation Intel Core i7 processor and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, with 16GB of RAM that our guide on how much RAM do you need says is the best place to start for gaming. It's enough to play today's best PC games without any issues, and it may even be capable of running the upcoming PC games of the next few years if you're willing to dial down the settings for the more demanding titles.

Read more
This 17-inch HP laptop is on sale for just $300 — but hurry!
The HP 17t-cn300 17.3-inch laptop against a white background.

If you want to buy a laptop with a relatively large screen, the good news is that you don't have to break the bank with your purchase because you can get the HP Laptop 17t for a very affordable $300. It's on sale from HP with a $200 discount on its original price of $500, but there's no telling how much time is remaining before this offer expires. We don't think it will stay available for long because laptop deals like this almost always get sold out quickly, so complete the transaction as soon as possible to make sure that you don't miss out on the savings.

Why you should buy the HP Laptop 17t
With the 17.3-inch display of the HP Laptop 17t, you'll have a lot of screen real estate to work on your projects and watch streaming shows. It's pretty affordable for a laptop with this large screen, which offers HD+ resolution for sharp details and vibrant colors. However, despite its big display, the HP Laptop 17t maintains portability because it's only 0.78 of an inch thick, which makes it easy to slide into your bag when you're on the go, and it won't be too heavy to carry around because it only weighs about 4.6 pounds.

Read more
What to do if your Intel CPU keeps crashing
Pins on Core i9-12900K.

Despite being among the best processors you can buy, some high-end Intel CPUs have faced a wave of instability over the past few months. Intel is investigating the problem, but the company and its motherboard partners have already worked toward some temporary fixes to improve stability on high-end Intel CPUs -- even if it comes at a performance cost.

Before getting into the fixes, keep in mind that they are temporary. Intel will release a statement on the instability soon, likely with more direct guidance on what affected users should do. In addition, the scope of the problem isn't clear -- if you're not experiencing issues, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.
Who's affected

Read more