California Conservative

Not intentionally.

TheDeal’s TechConfidential reports: “Yahoo! Inc.’s $1 billion investment in Chinese online retailer Alibaba.com last week marked a bold move into a burgeoning market. But the deal could put the search engine giant directly in the crosshairs of counterfeiting critics.”

“According to an article at Forbes.com, Alibaba is considered by some advocacy groups to be a leader in offering counterfeit American goods, which range from fake Duracell batteries to bogus big-name cigarettes.

By taking a 40% stake in Alibaba, Silicon Valley’s Yahoo! is effectively becoming a partner in crime, and could open itself up to legal action from U.S. companies whose brands are being pilfered, some say.

Witnesses at a U.S. House subcommittee hearing in June accused Alibaba of distributing wholesale quantities of counterfeit software, prescription drugs, clothing and batteries, adding that more than 66% of phony items seized here originate in China. A spokeswoman for the subcommittee told Forbes.com that it has the Yahoo!-Alibaba deal on its radar screen.”

Maybe Yahoo! should’ve done a better background “search.”

RELATED:
Yahoo!’s $1Billion Investment In China

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 18th, 2005 at 9:57 am and is filed under Asia, California, Capitalism, Crime, Miscellania, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.