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Name recognition, Alibaba was chosen you can go just about anywhere in the world and the people have heard of Alibaba and the 40 thieves.
It isn't the same as Amazon, they just connect manufacturers/sellers with buyers. Amazon does that to some extent but also sells their own stuff, makes about 5 billion a year on cloud computing, and is even starting to invest heavily in producing original shows like netflix, among other differences.
Americans have been buying stuff on Alibaba for years but usually you have to buy in bulk and wait for it to ship from China, great if you have some money to invest. Amazon is more convenient, they have their shipping methods dialed in pretty tight and can guarantee fast delivery.
You can bet the Chinese government is getting a good chunk of IPO money. A company this big can be private in China.
Huge Chinese corporations and the Chinese Government are practically one in the same. I just got back from China, huge news over there. Overpriced IPO - I wanted to remind my Chinese collegues of the facebook IPO.
This is all part of the China government plans to develop the new Silk Route.
The joke I remember from way back was when a Chinese flight attendant says I hope you enjoyed your fright . So that is not true?
Gonna assume this is not a rhetorical question. No, it is not true. Remember Bruce Lee? His last name in Mandarin is pronounced /lee/. In Cantonese, it's /lay/. It's the same L sound as in English.
Name recognition, Alibaba was chosen you can go just about anywhere in the world and the people have heard of Alibaba and the 40 thieves.
It isn't the same as Amazon, they just connect manufacturers/sellers with buyers. Amazon does that to some extent but also sells their own stuff, makes about 5 billion a year on cloud computing, and is even starting to invest heavily in producing original shows like netflix, among other differences.
Americans have been buying stuff on Alibaba for years but usually you have to buy in bulk and wait for it to ship from China, great if you have some money to invest. Amazon is more convenient, they have their shipping methods dialed in pretty tight and can guarantee fast delivery.
I was going to be cute and suggest "Because it's run by 40 Thieves."
But seriously folks, the more plausible explanation is when I first saw the name I thought of trade routes and world commerce and so forth.
OK, I just asked a friend of mine who is Chinese to pronounce alibaba. I know she can pronounce "L" as her first name begins with "L." She looked at "alibaba" (which I had in printing). She pronounced it "ar-i-ba-ba" initially. I told her that she was not pronouncing the "L" in the word...and to try again. She struggled with it, and had to pronounced it very slowly syllable by syllable to get the "L" correctly. BTW, she speaks Mandarin. Apparently, some Chinese people do have problems pronouncing the "L" in the middle of a word. She has been over here about 10 years now.
Sorry, but this is hard to believe. A person speaking Chinese can say words and sentences in a rapid fire manner with plenty of L sounds in the middle and would not have any problems doing so. Happens all the time in daily speech. Maybe your friend is speech impaired. Just because she can't speak properly doesn't mean one billion+ people in the world share her impairment. Ask a Chinese person who can speak like a normal person to repeat Bruce Lee's Chinese name ten times over in rapid succession and that person will have no problem. You make it sound as if a person would have to pause before the "Lee" every time. LOL Say Coca Cola in Chinese /ke kO ke le/ twenty times over and no one will have any problems.
In fact, Mandarin also has the R sound. It's similar to the English R sound, but the tongue is farther back in the mouth. R's are very interesting around the world. For example, the German R is quite different from the English R sound, yet it's still an R sound. The R in Mandarin is similar in that regard. Cantonese does not have this R sound. Both Mandarin and Cantonese, widely spoken Chinese dialects, utilize the L sound regularly.
I don't expect people in English language countries to get this. So many people have been fed misinformation for so long and they don't bother trying to educate themselves.
ovi8, baba means dad in many indo-aryan languages e.g urdu, hindi, punjabi, farsi etc and possibly in pashto/arabic too. I'm not too sure whether it means the same in chinese.
alibaba and 40 thieves is a very well known storyline in the Indian sub-continent and its pronounced ali (aa-lee) and ba-ba (as in ba ba black sheep). That is not an Americanized version as you describe it.
I always wondered about that, now I see. Pretty interesting.
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. Amazon is more convenient, they have their shipping methods dialed in pretty tight and can guarantee fast delivery.
A person speaking Chinese can say words and sentences in a rapid fire manner with plenty of L sounds in the middle and would not have any problems doing so. Happens all the time in daily speech. Maybe your friend is speech impaired. 
Just because she can't speak properly doesn't mean one billion+ people in the world share her impairment. Ask a Chinese person who can speak like a normal person to repeat Bruce Lee's Chinese name ten times over in rapid succession and that person will have no problem. You make it sound as if a person would have to pause before the "Lee" every time. LOL 
