Alibaba is planning to buy China’s equivalent of YouTube, Youku Tudou, for a reported $4.8bn in an attempt to provide more content to Chinese Internet users through the YouTube-like site.
Alibaba presently owns one-fifth of Youku Tudou’s stake, with the Chinese e-commerce giant reportedly approaching the company with a buyout offer in October.
Youku mostly offers professionally produced content on its platform, rather than amateur videos that You Tube is famous for.
It was previously reported that the company is planning to collaborate with US entertainment producers to create content for its website.
On the other hand, Alibaba‘s rivals have been increasing their spend on new movies, TV shows and original programming in an attempt to win over at the new audience.
According to reports, by owning Youku, Alibaba will be able to deliver US films and drama series to more than a third of China’s population and is likely to compete against current Internet giants Baidu and Tencent which also owns streaming sites.
Both Youku and Tencent’s video sites had 286 million unique visitors in August 2015, followed by Baidu’s IQiyi’s 273 million visitors, but according to Bloomberg’s data Youku grabbed the attention of viewers more than Tencent.
Wall Street Journal quoted Youku CEO Victor Koo as saying: "We are confident that we will strengthen our market position and further accelerate our growth through the integration of our advertising and consumer businesses with Alibaba’s platform and Alipay services."
