Lots of online media news in the last week that I will try to capture below along with a some comments. Forgive me for this long posting but worth a read!

On May 6th, Alibaba.com reported great Q1-08 numbers that beat all analysts’ expectations. The company saw net income double Y-O-Y (US$43 million) and sales increased by 53% for the same period.

Analysts were little impressed and again expressed concerns for the companies’ ability to sustain this type of growth long term. The stock has since dropped and is trading around HK$14.

Alibaba.com also announced a partnership with Infomedia, which is involved in yellow pages directories and bricks-and-mortar publishing.

Alibaba and Infomedia partnership will combine the power of traditional print publishing with online media and e-commerce to provide India small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) with a one-stop solution for global and domestic trade.

I would imagine that there is a big opportunity here if they can execute effectively and empower Infomedia to manage this relationship as India has been mentioned more than once as an area of focus and they will need a strong partner to pull it off.

As an aside, I hope this partnership bears more fruit than the one with Ringier which I will write about in another posting on TradeMediaBlog. Lots of opportunity lost there but perhaps they are not finished integrating. Anyone know?

In related news, Taobao.com saw RMB230 million in daily transaction volumes May 1-3 (International Labor Holidays in China), up 230% Y-O-Y. US$43 million in gross merchandise value in 72 hours! Keep your eye on this Alibaba Group asset folks and it’s sister, Alipay, as these are the companies’ most valuable assets and ones that could be the next to list as early as 2009.

Alibaba Group’s largest shareholder, Yahoo!, escaped the clutches of Microsoft as Ballmer finally walked away from what we at TradeMediaBlog consider to have been a great offer but an integration nightmare. Since then Yahoo!’s stock has fallen off and shareholders are angry!

Yahoo investors who wanted to accept a Microsoft buyout are not seen as likely to try to oust the board, and instead seem to be channeling their anger through lawsuits and a campaign to turn the annual meeting in July into a vote of no confidence.

The top two shareholders in Yahoo, Capital Research Management and Legg Mason, have signaled their displeasure with the company in the past week, and two pension funds in Detroit are suing the board over the negotiating process, which ended with Microsoft pulling its offer.

Will Microsoft go back to Yahoo! with another offer? The jury is out on this move but we (and I would imagine Alibaba Group) will keep an eye on this moving forward.

Of course, Google is giggling on the sidelines as they definitely played a strong hand in stopping this acquisition. Part of this was a 2 week test loading Google Adwords onto Yahoo! search results pages, which both parties say was effective and profitable. No firm deal has been announced yet there is already an uproar from advocacy groups against this pending agreement which they say gives Google way too much power as well as concerns of privacy.

While Google is keeping web players in line, they are also looking at new revenue streams. The latest consideration, supported by its recent acquisition of Double Click, is monetizing certain sections of its site with display ads (imagine search results with advertisements using images versus copy only). This does not sound new but it is for Google and could add up to US$4 billion in new revenues.

As usual, I hope you found this update useful and appreciate feedback on our TradeMediaBlog postings.