10:16 am: Walt takes the stage to introduce Peter Kafka, who will be interviewing Ma for the absent Kara Swisher today.

Peter Kafka: It seems like every time you’re on stage with us, we have to talk about Yahoo. So we may as well get that out of the way right away. We heard from Jerry Yang. What’s the latest? We know that you’ve expressed interest in buying all or part or some of Yahoo over the summer; in the past you’ve been trying to sort of at least get Yahoo out of Alibaba. So where do things stand right now?

Jack Ma: I think we still have not changed our mind, and we keep our strong interest on the Yahoo. The things that we are waiting for the Yahoo board, and especially their independent directors, to tell us what exactly they want to do.

PK: What do you think they want to do?

JM: I don’t know. [laughter] I’m waiting.

PK: And what have you proposed to them?

PK:JM: Well, I think not us, I think a lot of people have already talked to Yahoo for years. And I think we are, we have to know exactly what their — I know they have a lot of options, but you have to take one option first, what they want to do.

PK: Yeah, Jerry Yang said they have a lot of options, a lot of things on the table.

JM: Okay, I did not know that.

PK: They’re going to make one decision.

JM: Yeah, they have to make one decision.

PK: So, in the past you said, “I’d like to extract myself from Yahoo,” and I think you surprised some people this summer at Stanford when you said, “I would like to buy all of Yahoo.” Is that still what you would like to do if you had that option?

JM: Yes.

PK: You’d like to buy the entire company … Alibaba –

JM: Yeah, even though, as I said, if the, their board say … Yahoo, I’m interested. If our piece. We are interested, but just let us know what they want to do. [laughter]

PK: I understand why you’d want to buy back Yahoo’s stake in your company.

JM: Yeah.

PK: Why would you want to own the entirety of Yahoo?

JM: Well, I think Yahoo is so important to us, and we are also very important to Yahoo. And Yahoo is also so important to the industry. And we, you know, we’ve been thinking about that for a long time, we talked to Yahoo for a long time, and of course we know there is something that we can add value to Yahoo.

PK: Why are they important to the industry? Why — and how could you add value?

JM: Well, Yahoo, without Yahoo probably I will not start my Internet business, ’cause Yahoo, when I started business, Yahoo was my idol. And I don’t want my idol to fall down, and it’s so important to us, ’cause we are partners for so many years. And you don’t want to see your partners in trouble. So, if you can do anything to help, just help. If they don’t want the help, then don’t help them.

PK: But you guys have said recently, several times, that really that Yahoo doesn’t add a lot of value to your operations here. So I don’t want to belabor this, but I would assume that the main value to Yahoo would be to sort of get them out of your hair. But if you had to run the U.S. part of the company, and Jerry was on earlier and said the idea is to become the premier digital media company, is that what you would do with the Yahoo U.S. operations, and operations outside of China?

JM: I never tried to say, “Well, we want, I want the team, I want the market to know what exactly the company should do.” The people should know where they want to do, and make this thing come out and happen. Otherwise, this thing will go nowhere.

PK: Well, you said the people, you mean the management?

JM: I mean the management, and the people — I mean, when I say people in the company it’s about my colleagues. We know this is what we believe, if it is our belief, make it happen.

PK: So, if you were in charge of all of Yahoo today or tomorrow, what would you do? It’s your management.

JM: I think Yahoo is a great company, with great assets. And also, I think there’s so many great CEOs in U.S. that can run this business well.

PK: So you would bring in new management?

JM: Yeah. I don’t, I don’t — I think it’s a big challenge for Chinese people to go to the U.S. and run an American company. But we could definitely help.

PK: And you have a shortlist of people you’d like to hire? You want to tell us who you’d put in charge? [laughter]

JM: That’s, that’s too early to discuss about that.

PK: Okay, I tried.

JM: Of course, we will be thinking about that now.

PK: And I think you can answer this pretty quickly, but in the past, it’s been quite obvious that if you were going to buy all of Yahoo, you’d need financing, you’d need partners. And then there was a weird story that came out earlier this week, and it was a translation issue perhaps, but it said, “Jack Ma says ‘I have $20 billion, I can buy all of Yahoo by myself.’”

JM: Yeah.

PK: Am I missing something?

JM: I absolutely don’t have $20 billion. [laughter] But I’d love to, right? I think money’s, finance is not, never a problem. Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there. We’ve been working with Yahoo for years, and trying to buy some back and work something out, so we never think that the financial is a problem. The problem is what they want to do.

PK: Jerry was here, did you talk to him earlier? Did you ask him this yourself [laughter]

JM: No, I did not meet him today, and I just arrive last night for this event and go back.

PK: I’ve got to say, one of the cool things about an event like this is backstage — you can’t see this, but there’s lots of people hovering back. And you just talked to Jack Dorsey, from Square and Twitter, I think that was the first time you guys had met.

JM:: Yeah.

PK: Do you think there’s a business relationship between your company and either Twitter or Square, going forward?

JM: I think there will be a lot of business going on with our company with the U.S. economy — I see when I look at so many American amazing Internet companies. I think there are so many things that we can work together. So many. If, especially when we go to the States, we have to find partners, instead of finding competitors. And when they come to China, they need partners. And we are one of the best partners people can find.

PK: A lot of U.S. companies have come here with mixed records: eBay, sort of a competitor of yours, came, basically left; Google left for different reasons. Why do you think some of the big Internet companies have struggled, the big U.S. Internet companies have struggled in China?

JM: I think any company go to any nation, you need to have this struggling. The very important thing you should have is patience. And instead of looking at your own strategy about the … you should focusing on the customers in the local market. Serve them well, just like any entrepreneur, any business going there. For example, when we start Alibaba, I never thought this thing, and I believed this thing would never succeed within first five years. Takes about at least eight, 10 years. When I start a … I say, “Let’s wait ten years later, not now.” So if you come to China, or any big Internet companies, think about five, 10 years later what’s going to happen, instead of next year, five months later what is going to happen.

PK: You started your first Internet company in 1995, when most people weren’t starting Internet companies in any part of the world, with the exception of a few in the U.S.

JM: Yeah.

PK: Were you looking out five, 10, 15 years ahead then? Or were you just marveling at the fact that you could use Prodigy to dial up to the Internet?

Jack: Well, yeah, I start — You know, people know about Alibaba knew about … Alibaba know about today what we are doing. But the people did not know our China pages and our, the … Web sites, all filled. They only see some good side and they don’t want to see the bad sides. And when they see the bad sides, they forget about the good sides. So, I think it’s a long, when we started, we thought it would, we probably would be successful in three years and fail. And then, we start Alibaba, we know, “Okay, it takes long time.” When we start Alibaba — Taobao, we say, it’s a long time. When started Ali-Paint we know it a long time. So whatever we do today, everything, and I think as the CEO, everything I did, the decision I made, I asked myself, asked a team, “What’s this thing going to happen in five years?” And 10 years? Not in five months. I don’t want to see five months.

PK: And with the pace of change in any part of the world, but especially with the Internet, especially with Asia, where all these things are growing so fast, is it realistic to say, “I’m going to try to predict what the world will look like in five years?”

JM: Absolutely. I think when everybody’s talking about a fast and quick, you should think about slow. When everybody think about slow, you know, we have a long time, let’s move fast. This, this is always the right way to do business. Well, I did that, and now we, and everybody, everybody’s criticize this, and so wait a minute, let’s think about it. Everybody think this is a great, okay, be careful because you may not have the chance.

PK: Counterintuitive thinking, it works for a lot of people. One of, one of the themes that I, Walt brought up with Jerry, and I think he’ll, we’ll bring up throughout the conference, is this notion that a lot of what we’re seeing in China from the technology community, or what we could charitably call imitations of things we’ve seen in the U.S. Most of the stuff here comes from the U.S., and in iterates, to put it politely. First of all, do you agree with that, with that description?

JM: Mmm. No, I don’t really. I think, you know, the na–, I respect intellectual properties, I respect the great ideas, innovation, but these things, if nobody use it, if nobody devel–, if nobody innovate on innovations, that’s a big problem. You know, the IM was AOL first — I think the ICQ first made it, but now … make it even better. Right? And Twitter did a great job, and Weibo in China, also did a great job. And China invented the … but the USA and Western country made it better. The campus, everything, you know. The war is about learning.

PK: So you’re not spending time thinking, “How can I create the most innovative possible company,” you wanted to, that’s not keeping up enough.

Jack: I never think about “How can I make this company most innovative?” only think about how can I make my customer much happier and comfortable and last long. I don’t care whether people call you, “Jack you’re, your innovative company, or internet techno–” We are service company. Our job is using Internet as a tool to serve the customers, instead of, “Oh, we are innovative company.”

PK: And let’s be clear about who your customers are, ’cause it — some people might be confused about it. It’s generally not a consumer, right? You’re generally a B2B play.

JM: Yeah, we started from B2B play, we just focus a small business. My customer, as I said, my belief is my customers always be small business entrepreneurs. ‘Cause I’ve been working as a start-up entrepreneur for 15 years. And I know how tough it is, how difficult it is. Somebody, if somebody got it, help them, it’s not, Jack Ma can’t help them, it’s the Alibaba people useI internet that can help the small business. So, my customer is small business, entrepreneurs, and …

PK: [interposing] Small-business entrepreneurs who want to sell something, you enable that.

JM:: Sell something on the Internet.

PK: Like these shoes.

JM: Oh, yeah, yeah, this the shoe I bought on Taobao, because, oh, some, some lady in the countryside, they are making shoes and selling online, and I think if I buy it for $20-$30 … and they can have a job and they have fun, and I feel very comfortable. I think I’m getting older, love this kind of shoes. It’s very comfortable.

PK: They look comfortable. I might get some for the flight back, I don’t want to have a Kara Swisher incident. [laughter] But you guys just raised prices for some of your merchants, and that inspired a big protest. And you didn’t really back down. You didn’t change your mind. When customers or people who say that they’re customers, tell you they’re unhappy with the way the company is run, and you don’t change your mind, you say, “I’m going to go ahead,” what should we take away from that?

Jack: Yeah, the the past 10, 10 days was the, one of the most painful days for me, in my life. And when I fly back from the States to China to solve the problem, I listened to music, there’s a sunset, the people hurt you most are the people you love most. And I love the … I never thought about that. Alibaba never think about raising, you know, for the, raising the price and collecting more money from the poor SMEs. The purpose for doing that is because we want against the fake products, intellectual properties.

PK: So let’s explain exactly what you did do.

JM: Okay. We have, for Taobao’s side, we have one billion proud listings. And we have over 70 million unique visitors every day, and we are probably the largest e-commerce site, if not in the world, we’re at least in Asia. But there are a lot of fake products, intellectual property issues, and so we got to solve this problem. If we don’t solve the problem, Taobao will never last long. Three years, five years, we’re in trouble, ’cause we have to respect these things. So we said, “If anybody sell these kind of things, if you sell one, we find out, we’ll pay fine for five times.” And take the businesses seriously. And anybody come to Timo, which is focus of big B2C, all this big business –

PK: It’s the equivalent of a mall, an online mall.

JM: It’s a mall. We have 50,000 business selling these things on our site. So we said, “Anybody, if you’re on Timo, no intellectual property issues, no fake products,” all those were serious punished. And this message turned out to be we raised 10 times more fee. Because, thanks to the Internet time, you know, people don’t believe for the, what you want to do, people believe the rumors.

PK: You blaming that on the Internet or just human nature? The answer is human nature. [laughter]

JM: I think human nature plus the Internet [laughter] growth very fast.

PK: We’ll do our best to get things accurate. At least this is being recorded, so people can always check, check back. But you still had a lot of people protesting, and you didn’t back down. You said, “Well, we’ll try to make this more palatable for you, we’ll create funds that will make this easier for some merchants.” But it didn’t cause you to rethink your strategy?

JM: No, I, I’ve side, I announced firmly and clearly that we will never step one back from the intellectual property problems. And, and these fake products, and these is trust problem. So, but, helping small business entrepreneurs, we will do it. And the way, how we communicate, we are reviewing ourselves. So, that is why we invest. The problem, this problem can never be solved by Alibaba alone. This problem can never be solved within three years. It’s a long one, this is why I’m getting, oh, terrible days. But you know, this is why they probably decide to need us.

PK: I think if you buy Yahoo, there’ll probably be more difficult days ahead.

JM: More problems, oh, yeah, oh, yes. [laughs] Oh, yeah.

PK: But you’re okay with that.

JM: But you know, you know, if life is so short, if you really do, can do something, that help others and meanwhile you enjoy it, you know, enjoy. The other side is a pain. It’s your own choice. If you pick it up, go ahead. My friend said, if you pick up the way go to paradise, go ahead. If you pick up the way go to the hell, go ahead. [laughter]

PK: What about a nice middle ground? [laughter]

JM: No, you have two options, you have to pick up one. [laughter]

PK: Back to the U.S. for a minute. You bought a couple companies in the U.S., some of the other big Chinese Internet companies, Ten Cent in particular, have bought several more. Is that something that interests you? Do you want to acquire more companies within the U.S., or are those sort of one-off purchases?

JM: Well, I think we are interested in partnering more, and we are interested in invest — I think U.S. in need more Chinese investment, foreign investment. And they should accept it, because it’s good for USA, it’s good for the others. And I don’t want to come, to go to U.S. or go to Europe and just to go there fighting. We want to go there partnering.

PK: And the reason it’s important for the U.S. to take in Chinese investment? Spell that out for us.

JM: They need jobs. They need innovation from the others. Yeah, they, I think it’s great, U.S. have so many great innovation, like Apple, this and that. They also need a tiny SME innovations, which we can bring.

PK: You don’t think eBay’s going to take care of that on their own?

JM: Well, I think that eBay should take it up themselves, you know, they have great ideas and they, they develop it. Does not mean that this market should be eBay alone. And they come to China, I mean, anybody can do.

PK: So, you sort of own this commerce market in China.

Jack: Well, no, we are contribution.

PK: You dominate it. [laughter]

Jack: Yeah. I help.

PK: It’s a good thing. And the other big Chinese Internet companies all do things that are separate from that, but it seems like you’re starting to rub up against each other, along the side. Baidu is the dominant search engine, you’ve created your own search product. And you said something to the effect of, one of the reasons we’re doing a search engine is we want to sort of make it difficult for the folks at Baidu to sleep at night. Do you think you’ll become more direct competitors over time?

JM: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, because it’s good for markets, it’s good for industry. It is good for — we are, we’ve been separating Taobao three, three companies, in June, you know, because Taobao’s getting bigger, so I separate it in three. And the other, one of the reason is that I want, that make, running big company like a small company, make us small and the industry will be bigger. If we are big, industry was small. So, separate to three, and I said, well, 10 years later, any small piece of the three pots bigger than the others, let’s separate the three again. So, the competition, I don’t really focus on competition a lot. Competition is just, to me, is a dessert, it is a fun part of the business.

PK: But inevitably, like the bigger you get, and the bigger your people who aren’t competitors but might be, get, that stuff’s going to overlap. I mean, the analogy in the U.S. would be Apple and Google weren’t competing for a long time; now they are. Amazon is, in theory, a separate business from Apple and Google, but there’s a lot of overlap there, on and on and on. Do you think that’s inevitable in China?

JM: Absolutely. This is a market effect. You have to face it, you have to challenge it. And e-commerce is … Taobao is big, but compared to the tomorrow, the future, e-commerce, it is pretty small. It is pretty small. It is just a beginning. And I think it’s not — one thing I feel very different, because not only may, not only China, especially in the U.S., a lot of people that do their business, think first of competition. And I think the first is the customer, how big the customer base. And then think about, when you get tight, let’s find some competitors.

PK: So, don’t go find a market where there’s no competitors, find a market where there are a lot of customers and …

Jack: [interposing] Exactly. When you get bored, find the competitors. [laughter]

PK: [laughs]

Jack: Yeah, it’s true.

PK: You’re not bored yet.

Jack: Well, no. I’m kind of busy, I have to go back to business, you know?

PK: Let me just ask you a couple philosophical questions. Someone asked you a question, I’ve seen it on some previous interview, about donating money to charity and doing philanthropy. And your answer, in short, was, “I’m not that interested in that because what I think, I think the best use for my money is to build companies and to create jobs.” Do you ever think about reconsidering that, and thinking, “Well, maybe I could do something with these resources”?

JM: Well, I never said that I do not donate money to something. I think we probably contribute, I don’t know about the other Internet, Chinese Internet, we give 0.3 percent of our revenues to … to the environment protection.

PK: Right.

JM: Right? And we, I think, you know, I think together with my colleagues, we prob–, I probably spent a lot of money and efforts on doing this thing. Because it’s my private thing, I just don’t want to tell in the public it’s a private thing. I don’t want to say, “Well, I’ve donated money here.” Because for a business, I agree with … had a business, we have to bury our social responsibility into our business model. Instead of, well, “I’m making some money here by cheating the others,” and then donate money. I hate that. The business model itself should be, create value, and be good to the society.

PK: But, very often what a customer wants, you’re trying to serve the customer, may not be good for, say, the environment, right, the two can be–

Jack: And then don’t do it.

PK: –in natural conflict. So, who, what wins, if there’s a conflict between what a customer wants and what the effect might be on the environment?

JM: I think the choice is very clear. If it is hurt the environment, if it is no good for the society, just don’t do it. No matter how much money–

PK: Even if the customer says, “Give me more of that.”

JM: Well–

PK: “Take down that tree, dig up that hole.”

JM: Yeah, exactly, just … did last week, people say, “I want in on these kind of fake products,” intellectual properties. I say, “Well, kill me or put me in the prison, this is my decision.” I have principles.

PK: Is it realistic to have companies self-regulate themselves instead of the government doing it? I mean, we have this debate in the U.S. constantly, we go back and forth. Right now the pendulum is sort of tilting I think towards self-regulation.

JM: Yeah, where, whether there’s a government regulate or yourself, it’s your own belief. If you believe it is right, you don’t need other people to discipline you. And it’s better for the market, you know, company’s a market product. What I believe is that this is something you’re doing this good for the others, just do it. Right? Don’t wait for the government come. And if they can come, sometimes things get messed up.

PK: Another government question. In the earlier interview with Yahoo, Rose said, I think it was Jerry, perhaps, it was Jerry, said, “It’s an open question about whether or not censorship is going to ultimately stifle real entrepreneurial spirit and drive and creativity in China.” And it may be that enough government restriction will make it difficult for entrepreneurs to really succeed on the level we’ve seen in the U.S. and other countries. Do you agree with that?

JM: Well, it depends on which angle you see. I think censorship is, yeah, it’s issue, but it’s not that big issue. Let’s look at the good side of the Internet, let’s look at the good things you can do. This is always my optimistic view. If you focus on one side, for example, censors were so serious you got tied up about that, and we started developing the others. And I think Chinese government is sometime, you know, they are getting, they are getting more and more open. And then in some period, they’re getting close. Which I think it’s very natural for people like me, sometimes very happy, sometimes not happy. You know? Confidence … Tai Chi …

PK: [interposing] Do you think they inevitably, do you think they inevitably grow more open as commerce grows, as the country gets bigger? Or do you think they could still pull back?

JM: Yeah, this is, this is what I’m doing. I think the e-commerce, the commerce and trading, trading can help people understand each other, make full use of the Internet by creating value for the others. And then the more they do it, if you’re accountable, they release. So, but, I think it’s like in the company, when I look at my colleagues, my partners, my assistant. If you look at the bad side of this guy, you can never make things forward. Well, his best side is my, this is why I, they need me. Because Jack Ma’s shut … that’s why Jack Ma needs partners. So I think we try sometimes, you know, censorship, let’s see as a business what’s the opportunity we can do? And then, make them comfortable, things will get better. I hate to criticize people, I mean.

PK: But you will.

Jack: Yeah, sometimes get just annoyed, and I mean, then I criticize myself and then change, you know, this is life.

PK: So we started this interview 25 minutes ago, I asked you about Yahoo, this situation changes a lot — has anything changed in the last 25 minutes? Are you going to buy Yahoo [laughter]

Jack: No.

PK: Okay.

JM: No. I said we are waiting for answers. And there are so many people talking, and talking to us. And we will start to talk to them. Very, in the next few weeks. Because if we don’t do it, it’s no good for all of us.

PK: So if I ask you in a few weeks, I’ll get an answer.

Jack: I wish I could, it’s not on my side, it’s their side.

On to the audience Q&A …

Q Hi, I’m Justin Fung from HSBC. In your China 2.0 interview at Stanford, you mentioned that China’s going to go through many of the same challenges that the U.S. is going to go through in about three years. Can you go into a little bit more detail as to why you feel that’s going to happen in three years? What are the key issues that they’re driving at?

JM: Thank you. I’m not a financial columnist, but I just as a business guy, you have to smell what’s going on in the market. It’s instinct. And I think what’s happening to the U.S. today, and Europe, is going to happen in China, next three, five years. The problem, like of job problems, the problems like the economic structure problems, will all appear. So, the import/export problem, because the Asia — the USA economy and European economy, the China exporting, the problem is getting even worse, it’s getting worse. And the other thing is a domestic demand, we need take actions. And also in China called upgrade. Upgrading you have to pay the price. And I don’t see people are ready to pay the price yet. And these things are losing, and anything three years later, I think the past 30 years, for the first 10-some years, private sectors bump up the China economy. And next 10 years, in the international companies, multinational companies, half to China.

PK: Can you be clear about what you mean by upgrading? Who needs to upgrade? What are they upgrading?

JM: Well, China government it’s called upgrading, you know, and transforming called [Mandarin] upgrade whatever management or upgrade the industry. Upgrade, you have to pay the price. For example, I’m upgrading Taobao against these kind of intellectual properties. I got to pay price, I got 50,000 people demonstrate against me. But that’s the price you have to pay. If you don’t pay, come back to work, get bigger. So, this is the issue we are facing. We have to take the challenges. And I don’t see a lot of people ready to take challenge. They’re ready to talk, but don’t take challenge yet. So, if we don’t take challenge, three years later you will see what’s going on. So that’s my point: Let’s get ready for that, and jobs, as in small business, private sectors, they are going to be facing troubles. And we have to get ready for that. Thank you.

PK: In 2008, in retrospect, it’s easy to say you saw this coming, but you did see that there was going to be the credit collapse.

JM: Yeah.

PK: How are you feeling about the next six months to a year, nationally, internationally?

JM: Well, I don’t see there are any, for China. I’m pretty confidence in the next two years that, well, the problem will come in three, five years.

PK: And can you imagine what that precipitating event will be? What will trigger that problem?

JM: I don’t, I’m not fortune teller, just to say this thing is going to happen. And we got ready for it. If this thing, if we’re ready, that thing does not happen, everybody happy. For example, when we talk about the financial crisis, what’s the early beginning of year 2008, we find something wrong. So, I make the whole economy get ready for that.

PK: What was the signal to you that there was something wrong in 2008?

JM: Import/export is in problems. And people, for the forums, every forum I go, people talking about IPO, people talking about PE, people talking about profit margin, yet nobody talk about the value we created. People start greedy, people — everybody’s talking about how many, you know, times you can go, if you got to raise money and the IPO. So I know something wrong. People change. If everybody change that direction, this angle is in problem.

Q I’d like you, if you could talk about online currencies in China, their importance, and how you see the government attitude towards them as they grow.

JM: Okay. Honestly, I’m not, I may not be right, because few years ago when we talk about the online virtual money in the Alibaba internally, and I’m, I was strongly against it. Because I think if you are doing business in China, better believe IMB is the only currency. And if there anything that could probably get annoyed people or the government, just don’t do it, because there are so many ways you can do it. So, I was against it, and later that thing grows so fast. And I still think that Alibaba should not involve that. So that’s why Alipay the only currency for Alipay is IMB. Which, you know, we accept U.S. dollars, too. [laughter] But virtual money, I worry about that. I don’t — I just don’t want to have, like, 1,010 minutes of coins which I don’t know what I’m going to do. And the bigger that thing is, the government would take action. And they will. Any government will. I don’t know how, but I, I think they will. So, but based on the IMB, U.S. dollar, the pounds, I feel more comfortable on that. So, for example, why we did not do the online gaming? Because when, many years ago when everybody, any company, goes, “Let’s do the online gaming thing,” I know someday the government would take action where every kids are learning how to killing. [laughter] Something’s going to happen. Now it’s peaceful and quiet now, it’s much better. This is, this is, say, this is what I — when either you can make the too big or this become two bigger problems. Somebody got to involve it. So, I don’t know, I cannot answer the question, I just Alibaba does not have the intention of doing that, ’cause I worry about.

Q: Hi there, Richard Lai from Engadget here. Your company recently released Aliyun OS, which is a new mobile operating system. And last month you announced plans to release an English version, and even a tablet version in the near future. Can you talk about what benefits that will bring to the Western market, and even to Alibaba itself?

JM: I think, you know, a lot of companies are talking about cloud computing. And we take it very seriously because we have so much data. Datas from small business, datas from the consumers, and datas from Alipay transactions. And I think three years ago, we met internal, the strategic meeting, I sat. We don’t know how to make from the datas, but I believe datas will be so important to our small business, our consumers, and manufacture base. So, let’s, let’s invest money, then. We’re not sell, because of cloud computing, we are selling softwares; we’re not selling hardwares, we are selling services to these. So, this is our principle. And the, the OS for the, for the mobile phone, I think the next big wave, which we have to face the challenge is mobile Internet. We should make Internet mobilized. And how we can, how we can do that, China have like, I was told 60, 600 million mobile phones. And most of them are feature phones. And one thing struck me why I want to do — when people talk to me, they say, “Jack, we’re going to OS, we’re going to launch an OS.” I was shocked, “What, OS?!”

So complicated, how can we do that. Right? ‘Cause why Alibaba can do it? And these crazy guys working for, for one year, you know, our OS came out. It’s not beautiful, like any babies when they were born, it’s ugly looking. [laughter] But the mom always say, “Beautiful,” right? But takes time to make it beautiful. I said, “Wow, the baby’s there, let’s make this beautiful baby, baby beautiful.” But the thing that make me work on whether we will have the opportunity to do it, or the other company have, the opportunity to do it, China needs an operating system to lower the cost of mobiles. And I read one news, which I was touched, moved and I came back to talk to the CEO of Ali … We pay any price to move this industry up.

PK: You don’t think Google, Apple, people who are in the OS business, already spent a lot of years making that ugly baby prettier? You don’t think they can do this for you?

JM: Let ‘em do, let them do it. They should do it, like on eBay when they have 90 percent market share, I want to do it. The purpose I do it is different from eBay. And I think the market is so big. You know, I tell you the news, why I, the news I made full determination to do it. I read an article in the newspaper, there is a girl, 11 years old, her parents went to the city, as a, you know, as a city worker, and brought her, brought them together. She was 11 years old, the only things stay with her was three cats, seven chicken, in a lonely big house. And she wants to make phone call to her parents, but it’s too expensive, and it’s also so far away from where she live, in a village. So, I say, “Let’s make this mobile thing cheap. Make these girls can call their parents, brothers, at the cheapest prices. Second, when I see my daughter playing the iPad, I think all the girls should have this opportunity. And as whether we’ll make money or not, I don’t care, ’cause Alibaba, you know, we have so much cash, we need to be invested for the future. Let’s do it. So, this is what I believe.

Q: Does this also mean you’re also looking into maybe offering data service, as well?

JM:: Yeah.

Q: So, does that mean you’re looking into maybe entering that market as well?

JM: Yeah, at least if we’re not entering the market, we want promote, we want to encourage more people entering that market, making sure that the total cost of mobile going down, making sure China with the, with the managing factory capability, with innovation, with so many people today telling me, said, “Jack, you know, to make a Internet entrepreneur, this job is so difficult, because you guys are there.”

PK: So if you’re not going to get into wireless yourself, how do you encourage other people to do it and to bring the price down?

JM: Yeah, we are building up the infrastructure as always. We are not making trade our self, we build up a platform, making all the Taobao and Alibaba sellers to do it. We try to promote the industry, to make industry, because see, last six months was amazing, amazingly funny. When we announced we go to the mobile things, suddenly everybody said, “We are being in mobile system.” This is what I want. Let’s get people move with that. Because the mobile Internet is such a huge potential market for next China’s innovation.

Q: Coming back to Yahoo, there’s so much speculation about this future of Yahoo, but something most people are agreed on is that whatever happens to Yahoo, Alibaba is going to be thickly involved in any deals surrounding Yahoo. Do you agree with that analysis?

Q: Can be any deal for Yahoo without you being involved?

JM: Oh. I did not know we’re so important. [laughter] We wish we could, that’d be, that’d be that inference. But definitely, we are the main driving force. And we want to be the main driving force, and we want to do this thing as a partner-like thing.

Q: Okay, one follow-up question is you mentioned your interest in buying the whole of Yahoo. But do you see other outcomes for Yahoo? Do you think perhaps some people have speculated perhaps you’ll be interested in buying back your own stake held by Yahoo? Is that a possible outcome? Do you think that is more likely? Less likely than the sale of the whole of Yahoo?

JM:My answer, first, we are ready. Second, we also have options. And third, we are eagerly waiting for answers. [laughter] And they have to make decision. Today, as this environment, all the beautiful flowers withdraw very quickly. [laughter] And we got to, time is so precious for all of us. It’s not a good, it’s no good for Yahoo. It’s no good for everybody.

PK: So if you can sum up, Jerry Yang, Yahoo, independent directors, please make up your mind. Signed, Jack Ma.

JM: Yes! [laughter]

“The intent going in is not to put ourselves for sale,” Yang said, speaking at AsiaD. “The intent is to look at all the options.”

And while selling the company as a whole is one option, Yang noted that the company is made up of three key parts — its core business, its stakes in Yahoo Japan (along with Softbank) and its share of Alibaba.

Asked what he would personally like to see happen with the company, Yang said his goal is just to see Yahoo reach its potential.

“There are many ways of creating that environment,” he said. “So far, we have not ruled out any possibilities.”

Yang acknowledged that Wall Street now looks at the company’s Asian stakes as a significant part of its market value. “They are looking at a core asset that they don’t know how to value.”

As for that core business, Yang insisted that the company remains a premier digital media company, despite its challenges.

“We ought to be growing, can be growing,” Yang said, insisting the company has a great brand and 700 million monthly users. “We really do believe there is a path for Yahoo that can be better and higher growth.”

At the same time, Yang noted the company is also looking for a new CEO, an effort being led by an independent committee of the board.

“As these things go there is no CEO until there is a CEO, but the process has started,” Yang said.

In search, Yang acknowledged that the Microsoft partnership has been bumpy for both sides.

“I would probably venture that the Microsoft folks would say the partnership hasn’t gone the way they wanted,” he said.

But Yang said he is hopeful it will yet reach its goals.

“I think Microsoft is a very, very important partner for us,” he said. “I think both sides recognize this is a partnership that has to work over time.”

Yang noted that Microsoft has a lot of good people working on search — many of whom he noted used to work at Yahoo.

“It takes trial and error,” he said. “It takes work.”

Doggedly committed to the company he co-founded, Yang joins us today as a Yahoo director — ironically, one facing many of the same obstacles that confronted him back in 2008. One bright light amid the darkness: Yahoo’s massive and successful business interests Asia, currently overseen by Senior VP Rose Tsou, who joins Yang on the D stage today.

7:57 am: Good morning from Hong Kong. Yahoo’s Jerry Yang and Rose Tsou will be on stage shortly.

In the meantime, I can report that we’re playing Stray Cats in the ballroom here at the Grand Hyatt.

And now, some Devo. Perhaps at some point we’ll move to non-80s music. And if so, I’ll advise.

The Devo’s pretty good, though. If you want to play at home, enjoy.

8:03 am: And here’s Walt Mossberg. (Who walks onstage to Van Halen)

Walt delivers an update on Kara. She’s doing just fine, as you can tell if you follow her Twitter account.

Walt starts out with a D tribute to Steve Jobs. “I personally believe he’s a historical figure. Somebody who will be remembered alongside Ford and Edison.”

Walt talks about Jobs agreeing to come to the first D conference, and four more following. The last year, “he looked extremely frail — I think a lot of people were concerned.” And then he spoke with great vigor for an hour and a half.

“He’s been a terrific supporter of AllThingsD. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t complain. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try to get us not to talk about things, and we would say no, and he would knock it out of the park anyway.”

8:08 am: And now, Jerry Yang and Rose Tsou.

Some discussion of Kara’s health and great affection for writing about Yahoo. Walt notes that Kara filed a couple Yahoo stories while en route to the hospital Wednesday.

8:10 am: Walt: Tell us about the status of the CEO search.

Jerry: There’s a search and a search committee. “I think the board is pretty excited about the prospects, about the way we can invigorate the company, and the search process is one of them.”

Looking at all the options, both for Yahoo, and a prospective CEO.

8:12 am: Walt: How do you look for a CEO while you’re putting yourself up for sale?

Jerry: “The board works for the shareholders, and anything that benefits the shareholders, the board has to listen to.”

8:13 am: So what are some of the real options: A sale, and what else?

Jerry: Yahoo has a great core business “and I feel like we’re making great progress.” Great brand, 700 million users, etc. “It is the thing that everybody is looking at, and saying, “how do we invigorate growth around that?”

And we have investments with Softbank in Yahoo Japan, and here in China with Alibaba. Very valuable.

8:14 am: Walt: That’s the most important asset, according to Wall Street.

Jerry: Yes, there are plenty of options.

Walt: But you need to decide what you are. Last time you were here in 2008, I asked you and Sue Decker “what is Yahoo”? And to be honest, you guys had a lot of answers, but not a crisp answer, like Steve Ballmer or Steve Jobs or Larry Page would have.

So let’s try another version. “Why should 700 million keep going to Yahoo?”

8:16 am: Jerry: Everyone who works at Yahoo gets what we want to do — “we want to be the premier digital media company.”

8:16 am: Walt: Are you that now? Because I think people might say YouTube, or Apple, or Amazon…

Jerry: Yes.

Walt: Really?

Jerry: Sure.

Walt: Give me examples.

Jerry: You can watch videos, for instance, we’ve also got news, finance, sports, entertainment. “We’re probably category leaders across the spectrum, in different regions.” Yahoo Mail is big.

Walt: But hasn’t Yahoo Mail gone down?

Jerry: Yes, people think Yahoo Mail is declining, but the number of messages is up, engagement is up. Web-based mail is being replaced by mobile and other devices. But the fundamental back-end proposition that we offer is stronger than ever.

8:18 am: Rose: People come for Yahoo news, or finance, and they discover other stuff, like videos. A couple of weeks ago, we launched a premium video consumption site in the U.S. In India, where there’s low-bandwidth access, video and entertainment are very big for us.

Providers want to be on our platform, because of our reach, all over the world.

8:20 am: Walt: Jerry, do you have all the Hollywood and big media deals you need to make this happen?

Jerry: If you look at the media part, we’ve evolved from being a pure aggregation play to “having a voice.” We’re creating “color” around other people’s stuff, and we’re making our own. Like last week, when we were the exclusive streamer for the Bill Clinton concert.

Yahoo Sports “is a very well-known service in the United States that routinely breaks news now.”

8:21 am: Walt: Do you need to move more into video, etc.? Sports is big for you but you can’t watch sports on Yahoo.

Jerry: At the end of the day, if you look at what Yahoo’s been for past 15, 16 years, the part we have to sharpen is distributing content for our partners. Outside the U.S., we’ll definitely be distributing TV. In the U.S., less of that, but note our (most recent) partnership with ABC News.

In Silicon Valley there’s one view. But the reality is Yahoo is doing lots of those things.

8:23 am: Walt: Back to the review. What’s the best outcome. Would it be best if Jack Ma bought the whole thing?

Jerry: You’d have to ask him.

Walt: I’m asking you.

Jerry: As the founder, “the true ambition for me is to see Yahoo achieve the potential it’s in the position to achieve.”

I think that’s what the board and management are trying to do.

Walt: So can an entrepreneur like Jack make that happen?

Jerry: We’re looking at everything.

Walt: Do you want to be in the hands of a PE company?

Jerry: I don’t know, Walt. I think all of the options will work themselves out.

8:25 am: Walt: OK. The Microsoft deal, where at one point they were going to buy you, and then it became a search deal. It seems like it hasn’t caught fire and done as much for you as you’d hoped.

Jerry: “I think Microsoft is a very very important partner for us.” We’ve extended our revenue guarantee. But we both realize this has to work for both sides. “It takes trial and error. It takes work. I will probably venture that the Microsoft folks would say the partnership hasn’t gone the way they wanted.”

Walt: Meanwhile other people keep nudging into search. Even Apple’s Siri can represent search.

Jerry: Our focus is simple. We can control the way our users conduct a search. We’ve gotten very good at that. Microsoft is responsible for the back end, and for monetization. And the core focus is monetization. So there will be innovation about the way you find search, and define search, but really the core focus is on monetization, and we can’t help Microsoft much with that.

8:29 am: Walt: Rose, let’s talk about Asia. How important is Asia to Yahoo and consumers as a whole?

Rose: Very important! And growing! Between southeast Asia and India, in the next three years, there will be 100 million users coming online.

Walt: Primarily through mobile, right?

Rose: Yep. And not the smartphone we’re used to, but the $50 feature phone.

Walt: But as you know, smartphones will get even cheaper.

Rose: Yes, and a $100 feature phone now functions much like a smartphone.

Walt: So are you building features for that market segment?

Rose: Absolutely. For starters, we have to make sure media and communication products render well on those phones. And then we have to work on discoverability. People have to find your services. So we do a lot of partnership deals with chipset deals, and handset manufacturers, for instance.

Walt: How does a chipset deal help media discovery?

Rose: Great question. For example, we did a deal with a chip company so the media discoverability is sort of baked into the middleware. So when they pass on the chips to handset makers, it’s that much easier. In the feature phone market, lots of local makers are very happy to have brands like Yahoo baked onto the chipset market. We’ve gotten great feedback from manufacturers in India, Indonesia, China.

8:34 am: Walt: Jerry, there was a good story in the Asian WSJ the other day, tied to Steve Jobs’s death. It wanted to know about the Steve Jobs of China, and whether China was able to harness the energy and wonderful companies and services you have here, “but a lot of it is considered derivative” — they iterate on ideas that originate in the U.S. or elsewhere. Jerry, “what’s the deal there?” Do you think that’s right? When will China “startle the U.S.” by thinking up its own stuff?

Jerry: Two sides to that. I’m an optimist about China and Asia. “It’s just a matter of time… before true innovation comes. Now, it’s just not fair comparing it to Steve. He’s rare even for the U.S.”

Walt: I know. But he did lots of great world-changing things, and it’d be nice if a Chinese entreprenuer did one.

8:37 am: Jerry: “This is a statistics and probability question.” The number of people with technical training, and a Western education and understanding of how platforms work, and experience. Even compared to 10 years ago, management has so much more experience.

Still, there are challenges. “This is not a foregone conclusion.” There’s a question about how does media censorship affect creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. We don’t know yet.

8:39 am: Walt: I’m sure you remember that 20 years ago, it seemed like Japan was going to surpass the U.S., and there was a lot of government organization around that. But it didn’t happen.

Jerry: Please understand. “I’m not saying that China is going to overtake the U.S.” — there’s still a tremendous amount of advantage that Silicon Valley, or New York, or whatever, has with entrepreneurial culture, etc.

8:40 am: Rose: It’s harder to do breakthrough stuff here because the market is really big, and the competition is really fierce. “So I think there is less risk-taking, in going about doing something that’s never been proven elsewhere.” It’s more natural to see what works somewhere else, and replicate that.

Walt: Like those fake Apple stores they have in China.

Rose: Yep. On the other hand, the speed of iteration they have here is amazing. So they take a concept from the West, but they move so fast, that soon it’s a different thing.

8:42 am: Q&A:

Q: As you look at what Yahoo could be, what are the one or two key areas that it could go after to truly transform itself?

Jerry: We’re really focused on trying to “turn Yahoo inside out.” We do a huge amount of services internally: Data, content, personalization. Lots of other people on the Web around the world could use that.

Also, there are going to be multiple platforms: iOS, Android, maybe Microsoft. And we have to be able to play on all of them. And that’s an opportunity for people like us, who can distribute a large amount of content and services.

But this “inside out” idea is a big one.

8:45 am: Q: (via Eric Jackson): Your media answer reminds me of your vision 10 years ago, with Terry Semel, and Lloyd Braun, etc., that you backed down from. What did you learn then and how is that affecting what you’re doing now?

Jerry: The realization is “that we have to continue to disrupt ourselves in terms of how we distribute.” So just publishing on Web pages and HTML, and don’t pay attention to apps, and mobile, and social media, and we’re not being disruptive, then that won’t work. People think that media means you have to stream or pipe data. But it can be more than that. Ten years ago, we didn’t really focus on that disruptive element — “we just tried to put TV on the Internet.” And some of that worked, but some of that didn’t.

And we’re done — though as Jerry walks off stage, he tells Walt “I passed.”

Now, off to a demo from digital camera-maker Lytro.

So why Asia? It seemed the most obvious choice for us, as we looked at the global landscape for tech. While the whole world has now been engulfed in the powerful trends of digitalization, perhaps nowhere else has been as important a place for understanding where it is headed next than this region, which is home to companies critical to the next phase of innovation.

There’s no question that Silicon Valley, which has been the base for most of the key players — such as Google, Apple, Facebook and more — has driven the digital revolution over the past decade. But as we look out onto what’s to come, it’s clear to us and many others that what’s coming next and even the next great company might be born here.

That’s why we have created a conference that mixes both important speakers from U.S. tech and also from all over Asia.

Given that smartphones are in ascendance globally, having Andy Rubin, who runs Google’s Android efforts, is a no-brainer. The longtime mobile exec is at the top of an aggressive push by the Internet giant to dominate the important sector across the world.

Speaking of domination, Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma efforts to make the company a powerhouse in China and elsewhere are hard to ignore. His recent tussle and interest in Yahoo, as he has built a wide-ranging Internet giant, should make for an interesting interview.

Expect a deep dive into what makes the future Web work with Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, who is someone breaking new ground as he tears down old digital paradigms. With Twitter, Dorsey redefined the real-time world and how the virtual one communicates; with Square, he is upending the payments arena.

Nvidia is not only a pioneer of graphics chips, but now its processors are widely used in the latest mobile devices. That’s why its founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has a lot to say about the future of the fastest-growing sector of computing, from smartphones to tablets and whatever’s next.

Asus Chairman Jonney Shih has presided over the Taiwanese tech giant since the early 1990s. Most recently, the company pioneered the netbook market and is now plunging deeply into the tablet business, making Shih perfect to discuss these key issues in Asia and around the world.

Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai is widely considered the second in command at the consumer electronics giant Sony, in charge of its key computer entertainment division, as well as now serving as executive deputy president of the whole company. As Sony struggles to reassert its dominance in tech, Hirai will be a key player in that effort.

Bradley Horowitz — as head of product management for Google+, the search giant’s aggressive effort to break Facebook’s hammerlock on social networking — has a perfect perspective to talk about the fast-growing area and where it is going globally. With locally-based social companies springing up all over Asia, can Google establish one the whole world will use?

At Microsoft, Andy Lees is leading one of the software giant’s most important initiatives, as president of its Windows Phone division. His come-from-behind-Google-and-Apple job includes mobile software and hardware, as well as its key partnership with Nokia, and Lees will need to win in markets globally, especially in Asia.

Peter Chernin is one of Hollywood’s top players and execs. But he’s also been increasingly active in media investing in Asia of late, and has a lot to say about the global nature of entertainment in the digital age.

John Roese heads the North American R&D team for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant making everything from heavy-duty gear for networks to mobile phones and tablets. Roese will also talk about the phenomenon of a Chinese-owned company emerging on the world technology stage.

We also felt that it was important to hear from Silicon Valley start-ups, which have enjoyed unprecedented growth and funding in the Web 2.0 era. But as they seek to expand beyond the U.S., a critical move for them all, we’ve assembled a panel of entrepreneurs to discuss it, including: Brian Chesky, CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, the popular online vacation rental site; former Google exec Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who is running the recently funded Joyus, a new premium video commerce site trying to pioneer a new way to shop online; and David Goldberg, who is now running one of tech’s most successful start-ups at SurveyMonkey, the dominant online survey company.

Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang, who will appear with the Internet giant’s Asia head Rose Tsou, needs little introduction. For all of the noise around the company these days, Yahoo has a huge footprint in the region, maintains a big e-commerce business there and holds massive stakes in key firms, such as Yahoo Japan and China’s Alibaba.

And so does LivingSocial, whose CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy, who will appear along with founders of two of its Asian units, Daniel Shin and Paul Srivorakul, which the daily deals site just bought as part of its aggressive move into Asia.

Because of Samsung’s increasing importance as a global player in smartphones and tablets, it was natural to invite Dr. Won-Pyo Hong, who heads global product strategy for the Korean giant’s mobile business. That has surged in the past year to make Samsung a leader in Android-based phones and tablets, and a significant challenger to Apple.

Also key in the mobile arena is Cher Wang, chairman of HTC, the important and innovative handset and tablet maker which has been a key player in Android’s success story. Add to that HTC buying an operating system, which would further strengthen its hand in the competitive market, and it’s clear it is in a pole position on the critical mobile market going forward.

Finally, we are also glad to bring back Al Gore, who had a memorable interview at the fourth D: All Things Digital conference in 2006. The former VP and Nobel Peace Prize winner is now chairman of Current TV and also continues as a prominent environmental activist. He is also on the board of Apple, while also being a senior adviser to Google, as well as a partner in the famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins.

In total, along with some very cool demos to show off, it’s going to be an exciting AsiaD, and we are thrilled most of all to welcome our first international audience. So get ready for a busy three days here and we hope you will like what we have to show you.

With AsiaD just a little over a month away, Walt Mossberg and I are adding even more speakers to the list, for what we hope will be an awesome event in Hong Kong.

Taking place from Oct. 19 to 21, the conference lineup is already impressive, with a mix of speakers from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as Silicon Valley and more.

The previously announced speakers include: Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; Asus Chairman Jonney Shih; Sony president and second-in-command Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai; Google+ guru Bradley Horowitz; Hollywood big shot Peter Chernin; Huawei’s North American R&D head John Roese; Microsoft’s Windows Phone head Andy Lees; and a panel of start-up stars — Joyus’ Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky.

Now, to add to the kitty:

Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang, who will appear with the Internet giant’s Asia head Rose Tsou. For all of the noise around the company these days, Yahoo has a huge footprint in the region, maintains a big e-commerce business there and holds massive stakes in key firms, such as Yahoo Japan and China’s Alibaba. One of Yahoo’s first big investments came from Asian investor Masa Son, in fact, way back when.

Also on deck is LivingSocial’s CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy, who will appear with Daniel Shin, the CEO and co-founder of South Korea’s Ticket Monster, which the daily deals site just bought as part of its aggressive move into Asia. Competing there with its U.S. rival Groupon, as well as a myriad of local social buying services, the market is a tough one.

Because of Samsung’s increasing importance as a global player in smartphones and tablets, we thought it was important to have Dr. Won-Pyo Hong. He heads global product strategy for Samsung’s mobile business, which has surged in the past year to make the Korean tech giant a leader in Android-based phones and tablets, and a significant challenger to Apple.

Also key in the mobile arena is Cher Wang, the chairwoman of three Taiwan companies, including HTC, the important and innovative handset and tablet maker which has been a key player in Android’s success story. But just this week she talked about the possibility of HTC buying an operating system, which would further strengthen its hand in the competitive market.

That’s it for now, but we will have more big names to come, as well as some pretty cool demos we will be putting onstage at AsiaD. So stay tuned.

Alibaba.com, which operates Web sites that connect buyers and suppliers, said its net profit for the three months ended June 30 was 464.5 million yuan ($72.6 million), up from 363 million yuan.

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After our grand tour of Asia last week — with stops in Korea and Japan — it seems like a perfect time to update the speaker list for our upcoming AsiaD conference in Hong Kong in October.

As Walt Mossberg and I said, we are trying to mix both U.S.-based speakers with a pan-Asian selection of speakers from across the region, and the new additions are just that.

For the international confab — this one will be held Oct. 19-21 — we’ve already announced a great lineup, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; and Asus Chairman Jonny Shih.

Now, to add to that terrific lineup:

Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai is widely considered the second in command at the consumer electronics giant Sony, in charge of its key computer entertainment division, as well as now serving as executive deputy president of the whole company. In that role, the dynamic exec is at the nexus of the Japanese company’s efforts around tablets, smartphones, gaming and more. As Sony struggles to reassert its dominance over the arena, Hirai will be a key player in that effort.

Bradley Horowitz — as head of product management for Google+, the search giant’s aggressive effort to break Facebook’s hammerlock on social networking — has a perfect perspective to talk about the fast-growing area and where it is going globally. With locally-based social companies springing up all over Asia, can Google establish one the whole world will use? It’s an important question and Horowitz’s job No. 1.

At Microsoft, Andy Lees is leading one of the software giant’s most important initiatives, as president of its Windows Phone division. His come-from-behind job includes mobile software and hardware, as well as its key partnership with Nokia. With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android far in the lead, Lees will need to win in markets globally, especially in Asia.

Peter Chernin is one of Hollywood’s top players and execs. The former top News Corp. exec is now a movie producer — his first effort, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” is a big hit. But he’s also been increasingly active in media investing in Asia of late, and has a lot to say about the global nature of entertainment in the digital age.

John Roese heads the North American R&D team for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant making everything from heavy-duty gear for networks to mobile phones and tablets. The former CTO of Nortel, he’s heading up global development of Huawei’s cloud services for both businesses and consumers. Roese will also talk about the phenomenon of a Chinese-owned company emerging on the world technology stage.

Even in the midst of an economic downturn, there is no denying that it has been a golden time for Silicon Valley start-ups, which have enjoyed unprecedented growth and funding in the Web 2.0 era. But as they seek to expand beyond the U.S., a critical move for them all, we’ve assembled a panel of entrepreneurs to discuss it, including:

Brian Chesky is the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, the popular online vacation rental site that recently got a huge dose of funding and an equally large amount of controversy. How Airbnb can take the company to the next level, including across the world, while dealing with the kinds of challenges the small management team has to face, will be an interesting topic for discussion.

After stints as president of Asia Pacific and Latin America operations at Google and co-founder of the online personal finance company Yodlee, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is trying her hand at a small start-up again. She’ll talk about how the recently funded Joyus, a new premium video commerce site trying to pioneer a new way to shop online, plans to expand globally.

Finally, longtime tech exec David Goldberg is now running one of tech’s most successful start-ups at SurveyMonkey, the dominant online survey company. With stints as founder of music site Launch Media, which was bought by Yahoo, and as an Entrepreneur in Residence with Benchmark Capital, he is the perfect person to explain what it’s like being an entrepreneur today in Silicon Valley.

We have even more speakers for AsiaD we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks, so get ready for what’s next.

The first device to run Aliyun, Tianyu’s K-Touch Cloud-Smart Phone W700, will go on sale in China at the end of this month for about $416. It will be followed in short order by a tablet.

Alibaba is working on an English-language version of Aliyun and hopes to have it finished by the end of this year. It has no plans to make a handset of its own, though, preferring to leave that task to the OEMs. “We shouldn’t make a phone,” Wang Jian, president of Alibaba Cloud Computing, said during a press conference this morning. “We’re not in that ecosystem, and it’s a very good decision not to make a phone.”

[Image credit: Penn Olson]

Alibaba Group CEO Jack Ma says he doesn’t have the money to buy Yahoo, but he does have some advice for its CEO Carol Bartz and a potential solution to the company’s problems.

Split it up.

“If running a big company isn’t easy, divide it up into a few small companies,” he said of Yahoo at the D9 conference Wednesday evening. “They should be more open-minded about ways to solve their problems.”

Blunt advice for Bartz, with whom Ma has a strained relationship to say the least. Still, he did soften it with a sympathetic note. “I have a lot of respect for people trying to turn around a company, like Carol,” he said. “It’s not an easy job.”

“This is like peace talks at the United Nations,” he said. “It’s impossible that the board doesn’t know what was going on…Someone has to take responsibility to move ahead.”

Other topics Ma was willing to address in his interview with Kara Swisher this afternoon, ranged from what it’s like to do business in China when thousands of competitors crop up overnight, which is an issue that Groupon is facing, to a few words of advice for Yahoo’s Carol Bartz on how she could turn around the ailing U.S. company.

Here are the video highlights:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110601/alibabas-jack-ma-on-yahoo-talks-groupon-clones-and-his-advice-for-carol-bartz/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110601/alibaba-group-ceo-jack-ma-live-at-d9/ http://allthingsd.com/20110601/alibaba-group-ceo-jack-ma-live-at-d9/#comments Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:39:27 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=81367 Time was that Alipay was a wholly owned unit of China’s Alibaba Group. Then suddenly and without much of a word to anyone it became an affiliate of the Alibaba Group, owned by none other than Alibaba CEO Jack Ma. No one was more surprised than Yahoo, which happens to own a 43 percent equity stake in Alibaba. It is reasonable to assume that Yahoo was not happy about the sudden change. Soon they reportedly reached some kind of agreement. So what was that about? Expect AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher to ask Ma about it, and the state of the Internet in China, and probably a lot of other things during his onstage appearance.

5:40 pm: Kara and Jack are on stage now.

Kara: “What is up with you and Carol Bartz at Yahoo?”

Jack: Apologizing ahead of time for his English. Carol is my investor and partner. We sort of had some tough days before, but we’re working on it.

Kara: What have been the problems before?

Jack: We have a different view of the China market.

Kara: What is that different view?

Jack: I think Yahoo did a pretty good job in the States, but in China probably not that good. We’re trying to turn that around. We will be focused on the small-to-medium business, and on e-commerce. They have different ideas.

Kara: What were the different ideas?

Jack: I think when we first met, she was not happy. But I would be very happy if Yahoo USA came back.

Kara: But a “mind your knitting” kind of thing.

Kara: Asking about Alipay. Insinuates that Jack stole it from the other shareholders, including Yahoo.

Jack: I heard a lot of words like “stealing.” This is like peace talks at the United Nations. It’s impossible that the board doesn’t know what was going on. Yahoo is thinking about Yahoo shareholders. Softbank is thinking about its shareholders. I have to think about all of them. Someone has to take responsibility to move ahead.

Kara: So where are you now? Recently they have been more nice about it.

Jack: Because I’m the good guy.

Kara: Where are you in settlement negotiations?

Jack: We got the license. We are setting up examples for China’s companies, that doing business in China, we have to be 100 percent legal and transparent, and making sure the company can last long and grow. Based on that we started to talk. I think the happiest days in my life is when I worked for $10 a day. After three months I could buy a bicycle. Money isn’t my interest now.

Kara: How close are you to an agreement?

Jack: Its complicated. I’m optimistic.

Kara: But you expect to have some settlement.

Jack: Sure. I’m the single largest shareholder of the Alibaba group and I have to look after all the other shareholders and employees.

Kara: Would you like to be less of a shareholder?

Jack: If we can do something like that, sure.

Kara: How much foreign ownership would you like?

Jack: I’d like to try to diversify.

Kara: Is this an object lesson on doing business in China? What do you say to companies who have had difficulty moving into China?

Jack: It’s difficult to do business everywhere. I see thousands of companies die every month in China. So I think Yahoo and Google and eBay and these companies that are successful, the ratio is small. We will face the same challenge coming to the U.S. someday.

5:50 pm: Jack: If you want to do business in China, send your best people who serve your customers, and not the investors. There are a lot of gamblers and hedge fund investors who I have no sympathy for.

Kara: How do you assess your competitors? First, talk about the idea of you coming here, and Chinese companies coming here.

Jack: Our competition in China, I do not see strong competition. We are trying to make sure that Alibaba is the infrastructure of Chinese commerce, and most of China’s companies are about building products.

Kara: Talk about Alibaba Group’s several different entities.

Jack: We were born in 1999. I want the company to last 102 years so that it lasts across three centuries.

Kara: So in 2101 you’re finished?

Jack: Is that true? I’m not good at math. We grew from 18 people from one company focused on B2B import/export. Then there’s TaoBao, which focuses on small B2C. Then there’s Alipay, which some people compare to PayPal, which isn’t correct. It’s more of an escrow service. And we have Alibaba Cloud Services. And the fifth company is Alibaba Logistics Company.

Kara: So how do you plan to move into the U.S.?

Jack: We acquired two companies in California. We have 90 years to go, so don’t worry.

Kara: Could you buy Yahoo someday?

Jack: I would love to, if someone would lend me the money. Buying things is fine, but making things is more fun.

Kara: Do you see Chinese companies coming over and buying American companies?

Jack: Lots of people are dreaming about that.

5:57 pm: Kara: How do you do business in China?

Jack: Everywhere I go, people ask me about censorship. But I tell them that if you follow the law, you’ll be fine. But China has more than 500 million entrepreneurs. As an entrepreneur I see the opportunities.

5:58 pm: Jack: I remember 15 years ago people saying that when a government law comes, people try to get around and avoid the laws. With Alibaba, I try to follow the laws.

Kara: Let’s talk about your religion, the religion of business. Talk about your three rules.

Jack: Customer number 1, employee number 2, shareholder number 3. If the customer is happy, the business is happy, and the shareholders are happy.

Jack: I spend most of my time in airports. I ask myself why I’m still working so hard. It’s because I see that we’re changing society and improving China. I got a note from someone saying ‘Thank you for Alibaba, because of you we hired three more people.’ I don’t smoke, but they sent me a pack of smokes.

Kara: Is this a sign of changes coming in China?

Jack: We are changing China. We make credit a sign of money. The references you have from customers, we make you richer.

Kara: What are the key trends in China right now?

Jack: Custom and people, and third, the shareholders and governance. My advice to everyone: Government is the same no matter where you are: Love them but don’t marry them. Don’t do business with them.

Kara: What are the key business trends?

Jack: Mobile and gaming, and search engines.

6:03 pm: Kara: This idea of fast innovation happening in China–when does a company come out of China that’s like a Google or something, that doesn’t come out of a clone of other companies?

Jack: When Alibaba started, there were about 2,000 companies that copied our model. We believed the dream. Today we are probably the only B2B left. The copycats can’t last long.

Jack: The scholars told me that every other country had the same problem with copying. If companies like us are successful, people will say it’s because of the mission and the business.

Jack: When I go to forums, it’s always boring to listen to the guys from the large public companies. When I talk to small and medium businesses, I get excited, because I know they’re going to be the big companies someday.

6:07 pm: Questions, first about Africa. I was planning to go there in July, but because of Alipay, I won’t.

Question: Do you have any advice for Yahoo, given their problems?

Jack: It is not easy for anyone to turn around a company. I have a lot of respect for people trying to turn around a company like Carol [is]. It’s not an easy job. I think Yahoo should be more open-minded in using various ways to solve its problems.

Kara: Like how?

Jack: People give hundreds of ideas. What does the management and board of Yahoo want to do? I want to know what they are thinking.

Kara: Is there anything you would do? Maybe you can answer the question “What is Yahoo?”

Jack: Maybe split it into smaller pieces.

Question: When you look at different successful Chinese companies, what lessons might you share in how they hire, train and compensate people, whether it’s Baidu or other companies? And how can Western companies become more successful?

Jack: This is my favorite question. There is no best people “outside the company.” I think the best people you train yourself and you develop. Multinationals use headhunters and try to find the best people. I applied three times to university and failed. I tried to apply for 27 different jobs and failed. Today the reason Jack Ma is up here talking to you is because I learned. Treat your people well. China is different from the other nations like Japan and the U.S. China is more entrepreneurial than Japan or the U.S. Give young people a lot of opportunities. I spend a lot of time and resources on training our own people. I hope–like Jack Welch says–that 20 or 30 percent of the CEOs of other companies come from our company.

And we’re done. Come back later for Kara’s interview with Marc Andreessen!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110601/alibaba-group-ceo-jack-ma-live-at-d9/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110525/yahoo-says-progress-in-alibaba-talks/ http://allthingsd.com/20110525/yahoo-says-progress-in-alibaba-talks/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 18:30:22 +0000 Shara Tibken http://allthingsd.com/?p=78235 Yahoo Inc. executives said they had made “significant progress” with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to settle a row over ownership of a key unit that affects the value of the U.S. Internet giant’s investment in its Chinese partner.

Chief Executive Carol Bartz and co-founder Jerry Yang kicked off Yahoo’s investor day with a conversation about the Alibaba dispute, saying Yahoo, Alibaba and Japan’s Softbank Corp., which also owns a large stake in Alibaba, are working closely together to resolve the problem.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110525/yahoo-says-progress-in-alibaba-talks/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110518/yahoo-expanding-rd-in-china/ http://allthingsd.com/20110518/yahoo-expanding-rd-in-china/#comments Wed, 18 May 2011 15:00:40 +0000 Loretta Chao http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=41233 Yahoo Inc. is aggressively expanding its China research and development operation, Chief Product Officer Blake Irving said in Beijing Wednesday, despite worsening tensions between the U.S. Internet company and the operator of its Chinese website, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Yahoo added more than 100 people last year to its Beijing research and development center, and plans to continue hiring at a similar rate this year, Mr. Irving told reporters on a visit to the Chinese capital. He said the China R&D operation has “hundreds” of employees–he didn’t specify a figure–and is Yahoo’s third biggest after centers in California and Bangalore, India.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110518/yahoo-expanding-rd-in-china/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110515/alibaba-and-yahoo-why-cant-we-all-just-get-along/ http://allthingsd.com/20110515/alibaba-and-yahoo-why-cant-we-all-just-get-along/#comments Sun, 15 May 2011 17:06:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=62980 A slight–very slight–easing of tensions today in Yahoo’s spat with Alibaba over the Chinese company’s transfer of its Alipay online e-commerce payment system to Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, a move that devalued Yahoo’s 43 percent stake in Alibaba. After a week of accusations, denials and contradictory who-knew-what-and-when statements, the two companies have agreed to talk things out. Below, the joint statement they issued moments ago:

“Alibaba Group, and its major stockholders Yahoo! Inc. and Softbank Corporation, are engaged in and committed to productive negotiations to resolve the outstanding issues related to Alipay in a manner that serves the interests of all shareholders as soon as possible.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110515/alibaba-and-yahoo-why-cant-we-all-just-get-along/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110511/yahoo-discloses-alipay-stake-restructuring/ http://allthingsd.com/20110511/yahoo-discloses-alipay-stake-restructuring/#comments Wed, 11 May 2011 19:31:17 +0000 Steven Russolillo http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=40911 Yahoo Inc. disclosed that China’s Alibaba Group has transferred ownership of its online-payments company to a new entity controlled by Alibaba Chief Executive Jack Ma.

Alibaba Group’s management and principal shareholders, Yahoo and Softbank Corp. are “engaged in ongoing discussions regarding the terms of the restructuring” related to the online payment business, dubbed Alipay, according to a filing Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission.

The restructuring is necessary to expedite obtaining an “essential” regulatory license, Yahoo said in the filing. Yahoo wasn’t immediately available for further comment.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110511/yahoo-discloses-alipay-stake-restructuring/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110428/whats-really-going-on-with-facebooks-china-plans/ http://allthingsd.com/20110428/whats-really-going-on-with-facebooks-china-plans/#comments Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:00:45 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=5944 Facebook’s tumultuous seven-year history as a company has been smooth sailing compared to what’s coming next: China.

Because while the country is a key global market, doing business there is rife with all kinds of thorny challenges and troublesome compromises.

So, despite its progressively weaker denials, numerous sources said Facebook is preparing to launch in China. Now, the social networking giant is working out the details of a localized Chinese offering and trying to execute them as quickly as is prudent.

Perhaps the most important detail of Facebook’s planned China offering is that it will likely be connected to the greater international Facebook community, rather than operated as an independent social network.

While some had advised Facebook to start with a closed Chinese service, sources said the company seems inclined to launch it as a network linked to the rest of the world.

That’s not a decision without controversy, due to the strictures of operating within an authoritarian state.

When Facebook users outside China connect with users inside China, sources said they will need to click through a warning that any material visible to Chinese users may also be visible to the Chinese government.

Over the past few weeks, NetworkEffect has spoken to numerous sources in and around Facebook about how Facebook.cn will come to be.

Picking a Partner

As has been reported elsewhere, Facebook will almost certainly launch its China version in partnership with Baidu.

While Facebook insists that no deal has been signed with anyone, sources within and around the company described Baidu as the most serious competitor.

Alibaba had also been in the running, but sources said its leaders had voiced disagreement with Facebook’s vision for connecting Chinese users to one global social graph, rather than first starting with a closed system.

Alibaba advised the more conservative approach, given that the Chinese political situation is currently quite tricky and the U.S. government would likely find fault with Facebook seeming to play any role in censoring its users in China, said sources.

A source familiar with those talks said of Facebook’s inclination to go with Baidu over Alibaba, “It was an issue of Mr. Right Now instead of Mr. Right.”

Other partners considered included Sina, Tencent and China Mobile, but Sina and Tencent have their own social offerings that were judged to be too competitive with Facebook, said sources.

In the meantime, Baidu–often called the Google of China–is very much like Google in that it has little in the way of social strategy.

Facebook, led by its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has increased its sense of urgency about having a presence in China. Zuckerberg visited China in December, where he met with entrepreneurs from Baidu, Sina and China Mobile.

Baidu leaders then came to visit Facebook twice in February, at which point some say a deal to work together was struck, although Facebook emphatically denies any official papers have been signed.

Facebook’s current official statement on the matter: “We are currently studying and learning about China, as part of evaluating any possible approaches that could benefit our users, developers and advertisers.”

Baidu had no comment.

The Perfect Time Is Never

Facebook, which is currently blocked in China, finds the market hard to resist despite the ethical implications of cooperating with its government. Zuckerberg said in an interview at Stanford last fall that Facebook determined in 2010 that China was one of the four remaining target countries it was not yet “winning or on a path to win,” along with Korea, Japan and Russia.

Of China, Zuckerberg said specifically: “How can you connect the whole world if you leave out 1.6 billion people?”

Leaders at the company–whose mission is to “make the world more open and connected”–feel it is important to include Chinese users as part of the larger global social network, rather than keeping them separate. The solution they have apparently arrived at is to show the warning messages about connections between the larger Facebook network and the Chinese-censored Facebook.

That sentiment could be looked at as laudable–as it brings a modicum of openness to China–or cynical, in that it requires a major ethical compromise.

That said, Facebook already employs censorship in several countries it operates in currently, such as Pakistan and Germany, in order to abide by local laws.

“It was a very active dialogue inside the company, but there was no other way to operate in China,” said a person familiar with the discussions.

And there aren’t good examples of American Internet companies successfully operating in China for Facebook to draw inspiration from.

Google’s internal moral dilemmas about operating in China are well known. But while Google is primarily a search engine, Facebook’s product is a platform for communication and organizing.

The situation in China is even more challenging following revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa that have been closely tied to Facebook and social media.

Facebook has been careful not to claim any credit for popular uprisings or to align itself as a force of democracy, but others outside the company have made those connections for it.

Facebook currently has about 400,000 active Chinese users, many of whom access the site by evading the so-called “Great Firewall of China” through use of virtual private networks.

Meanwhile, social sites within China are rocketing up in usage and becoming financially significant. Sina Weibo, which is much like Twitter, is said to have something like 100 million users.

And RenRen, the social network that has followed Facebook’s execution step by step, has filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange with a $4 billion valuation.

Sources close to Facebook said that RenRen’s U.S. fundraising, in particular, is a significant motivator for Facebook to launch its China offering sooner rather than later.

“I would not discount the need for Facebook not to sit by and watch a significant competitor gain that much advantage,” said one person close to the situation.

Nuts and Bolts

Under discussions now taking place, sources said Facebook’s proposed plan could have Facebook and Baidu share the cost of setting up servers in China, and share revenue from the local version of the site. The local partner, Baidu, would presumably manage the censoring of the site and ongoing dealings with Chinese authorities.

As described above, when users outside China opt to connect to those inside China, they would see a warning message about the Chinese government.

As we all know, users are notoriously good at clicking through pop-up warnings without reading them, although this one is sure to get more notice.

Facebook could also use a combination of what it calls input filters and display filters, where Chinese users won’t be able to post or view content that’s objectionable to the Chinese government, but the rest of Facebook can run normally, sources said.

It will be a somewhat complicated technological endeavor to ensure that non-Chinese portions of the site don’t get stored in China.

Finally, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook is considering sending a small group of its employees to help manage operations, but sources close to the company said this issue is still being debated due to safety considerations related to China’s oppressive government.

Ready, Set, Controversy

Net Jacobsson, who led Facebook’s previous effort to enter China–a translated version of the site that was launched around the time of the Beijing Olympics and was live for only a few days before being blocked–said in an interview with NetworkEffect that it’s not just entering China that’s difficult, but what comes after.

Jacobsson is no longer with the company and said he does not have direct knowledge of its current plans.

In addition to complying with rules forbidding political speech, gambling and pornography, as well as government requests for user information, American companies operating in China have to deal with ruthless local competition and incensed and vocal politicians in the United States.

“It will be difficult just trying to manage those two different worlds in a world that is so transparent,” Jacobsson said.

Obviously, Facebook getting involved in censorship in China will be a difficult concept for many people to swallow. In China, censorship is largely expected and normal and citizens are used to reading between the lines.

In the U.S., it’s considered a serious compromise of freedom.

Sources close to Facebook maintain that the company already censors some user contributions in accordance with local laws in Germany, Pakistan and Italy, so abiding by Chinese censorship rules is consistent.

But China’s size, importance and–more to the point–its suppression of free speech are unmatched.

(Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110428/whats-really-going-on-with-facebooks-china-plans/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20101013/alibaba-microsoft-team-up-on-chinese-search-site/ http://allthingsd.com/20101013/alibaba-microsoft-team-up-on-chinese-search-site/#comments Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:38:21 +0000 Loretta Chao http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=31007 Big Chinese electronic-commerce company Alibaba Group has joined with Microsoft Corp. to create a new Web-search site—a move that could challenge Baidu Inc.’s (BIDU) dominance of China’s search market.

Alibaba Group, of which Yahoo Inc. owns a roughly 40 percent stake, launched a beta version of a website called Etao on Saturday, aimed at driving traffic to Alibaba’s retail website, Taobao.com.

Search results on Etao are displayed in several groups. Taobao listings, including images and product prices, appear first. Those are followed by links to related online forums. Next come informational websites and Web search results provided by Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Alibaba and Microsoft (MSFT) confirmed that Etao is in public, or beta, testing, but declined further comment. A Yahoo (YHOO) spokeswoman declined to comment on the new search site. She added the company doesn’t have operational control over the Yahoo China business.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101013/alibaba-microsoft-team-up-on-chinese-search-site/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100930/here-comes-the-yahoo-spin-cycle-so-try-boomtowns-soap-free-guide-to-whats-actually-happening/ http://allthingsd.com/20100930/here-comes-the-yahoo-spin-cycle-so-try-boomtowns-soap-free-guide-to-whats-actually-happening/#comments Thu, 30 Sep 2010 07:53:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34475

Here’s how Yahoo’s top brass and board–with the help of its newly re-engaged crisis-management PR firm, Abernathy MacGregor–are already trying to spin the latest executive turmoil to hit the company:

Trashing those on the way out, to take focus off those remaining who have been just as responsible for driving the Internet icon and claiming that this is all part of yet another well-planned reorganization at Yahoo (YHOO).

Don’t believe most of it for a second. Some of it is corporate politics as usual, some of it rejiggering of events, some just not true at all.

After BoomTown’s scoop earlier today that Yahoo’s U.S. head Hilary Schneider, as well as Audience head David Ko and VP of Media Jimmy Pitaro, would be departing the company–all of which Yahoo is still planning to announce after the markets close on Friday–here comes this gem in a follow-up story in The Wall Street Journal:

“[Yahoo CEO Carol] Bartz, who joined Yahoo in January 2009, is in the midst of a turnaround effort. People familiar with the matter said she is removing the company’s old guard to assemble a new team.”

Let’s parse this ridonkulous spin-addled blame game, shall we?

Bartz is, in fact, the very person who picked all those execs for prime responsibility in her last reorg.

If they were so incompetent, why not dump them much quicker? After all, it’s not like the problems have not been mounting for months and months, with more and more talent taking off.

In addition, the exec exodus at Yahoo over the last year has been unrelenting and broad, encompassing way too many employees for her to act as if it were all planned and okay.

As to the “midst of a turnaround effort” canard that Bartz keeps insisting on, even comparing herself to Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Job’s epic journey to return that legendary company to health?

Um, we are deep in the second year of the Bartz regime, and there appears to be no iPod-like save in sight, and it’s a little long in the tooth to keep using the turnaround excuse for all that has not yet happened under her command.

Which is to say, stock with a pulse and real growth across all metrics, as Facebook and Google (GOOG), to name a few, are showing.

In addition, it was Bartz herself who handed over a lot of the responsibility for the revival of Yahoo to Schneider.

Which meant Schneider had to be thrown under the wheels of the bus in the Journal by dragging out a very old–and tangential to the much larger flat revenue crisis at Yahoo–newspaper deal as pretty wet cannon fodder:

“Ms. Schneider is leaving because officials haven’t been satisfied with her performance, according to people familiar with the matter. Ms. Schneider was responsible for a 2006 deal with industry group Newspaper Consortium, in which Yahoo sold ads for newspaper websites and print editions. The effort continues but has not met Yahoo’s expectations, according to a person close to the company.”

Memo to readers: “People familiar with the matter,” I am guessing, would be current Yahoo execs.

The fact of the matter is that there have been both critics and admirers of Schneider at Yahoo, which comes as no surprise for one of its top execs. Some consider her smart and canny, while others complain of indecisiveness and slowness to act.

And, she has definitely had some very big whiffs, including the newspaper consortium, but most especially not finding an ad sales chief to replace Joanne Bradford, who left in March, about which I gave her a hard time when a very squishy structure was announced.

And, right now, sources tell me, Yahoo’s upcoming quarterly report could be an even tougher one.

And that falls to Schneider, of course, who has been in charge of its many partnerships, as well as advertising sales across the key Americas region.

Perhaps good reason for an ouster, except I have been tracking Schneider’s status for many months now, since hearing from many sources–not her, ever, in case you wanted to know–that she had told Bartz she wanted out.

Maybe that is what began to sour the boss on Schneider. But to now suddenly call her performance poor seems unusual, especially when you can just as easily point to Yahoo’s disastrous and pricey marketing campaigns–it is definitely not You!–helmed by CMO Elisa Steele, which has failed to move the needle on key user metrics.

But she has a tight relationship with Bartz, so she’s all right, jack? I am dizzy from all the spinning.

In other words, execs make mistakes and there is a lot of blame to go around and–as the old saying goes–the buck really does stop with Bartz.

But, guess what? Perhaps it should be noted that Bartz has also misstepped badly of late by making a series of wild remarks that have seriously angered many partners and other companies in Silicon Valley.

And I have heard from countless and very significant investors, all of whom are deeply concerned about her tone and recent public comments.

Just ask Yahoo Japan’s Masayoshi Son. Or Alibaba’s Jack Ma in China. Or the fine folks over at Apple in Cupertino, Calif.

And, I can also report that several execs at Yahoo’s new search technology partner, Microsoft, are also increasingly alarmed. Said one to me yesterday: “It is becoming a little unsettling.”

I can say for certain that Ko, who will doubtlessly be the next to get dinged, left on his own motor, telling Bartz himself recently.

He was quickly followed by Pitaro, who, as I reported earlier this week, is headed to another big company. No matter what the spin, his departure is a big loss, as he is well-liked inside and outside the company.

Then Schneider rounded out the latest trio of execs to go.

Thus, sources said, Yahoo is about to go on the offense, which is the expected thing to do, ready to announce a plan to move most of the product organization under Chief Product Officer Blake Irving.

The former Microsoft (MSFT) online exec is as sharp as a tack, in my experience, and clearly an even sharper corporate player, recently bringing in a series of his old cohorts from the software giant to take over big jobs at Yahoo.

He’s obviously now won some version of a corporate power play, and is now in favor with Bartz. But that means he’s being handed the entire thing.

Apparently, Irving has told numerous people that he plans to “rip it all down” and streamline the whole organization.

More rearranging at the company that has moved around the corporate living room umpteenth times over the past several years? Except it is still essentially the same room and same house.

Okay, Irving should probably have his choice of where the sofa goes, but as one exec wisely told me tonight: “Yahoo needs to build great products, not have another reorg….It needs a win.”

Indeed, just as board member Eric Hippeau apparently said at a recent meeting to deal with the latest executive kerfuffle.

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock–who has presided over so many stumbles over the years that I have lost count–said to the room: “We need crisis management.”

Countered Hippeau, a longtime Internet exec who is now CEO of the Huffington Post: “What we need is revenue.”

Indeed. And innovation. And a vision. And, most of all, spin-free leadership.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100930/here-comes-the-yahoo-spin-cycle-so-try-boomtowns-soap-free-guide-to-whats-actually-happening/feed/ 12 http://allthingsd.com/20100921/yahoos-bartz-in-the-hot-seat-at-goldman-conference/ http://allthingsd.com/20100921/yahoos-bartz-in-the-hot-seat-at-goldman-conference/#comments Tue, 21 Sep 2010 22:36:24 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30131 On the heels of a damning analysis this morning that valued Yahoo’s core assets at “less than zero,” CEO Carol Bartz made her pitch to Wall Street at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference–and, as paidContent’s Joseph Tartakoff reported, she deflected a fair amount of criticism. On the topic of Yahoo’s rocky relationship with Alibaba, Bartz dismissed some recent coverage as “commotion,” but she did acknowledge the value of Yahoo’s Asian assets as much greater than the value of Yahoo Inc. “Our job as a management team is really to get the growth story back,” she said.

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