Alibaba-eBay showdown looms

China's biggest e-commerce company, Alibaba will soon target US consumers for the first time in a move that pits it against eBay, reports eCommerce Bytes.

eBay and Alibaba had a falling out recently. eBay feared AliExpress was reaching consumers (in addition to online sellers), and in June it cancelled an agreement that offered PayPal integration on AliExpress.

Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group, used an annual customer convention to signal stepped up competition with a range of targets, from eBay to China's state companies, as the Chinese e-commerce giant seeks to put a scandal firmly behind it and expand sales at home and in the US, reveals The Wall Street Journal Online.

Ma told customers and employees at the weekend's Alifest meeting that Alibaba hopes to increase the volume of transactions on its Taobao Marketplace and Taobao Mall.

Taobao Marketplace and Taobao Mall are already two of China's most popular consumer e-commerce Web sites, and are expected to reach $157 billion in revenue by 2012.

Bloomberg states Alibaba started its eTao search engine last year, and expanded in mobile phone operating systems this year, seeking new revenue sources. Baidu fields more than 80% of China's search engine traffic after overcoming competition from US rival Google.

“If Alibaba wants to compete on search, bring it,” says Kaiser Kuo, a Baidu spokesman. “Baidu doesn't obsess about what the competition is doing. We obsess about what our users want.”