Alibaba Group was founded by the former English teacher Jack Ma together with a group of colleagues and friends in Hangzhou, China. It began as a business-to-business website that connected Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers, at a time when few Chinese firms were online. The group later added Taobao, a consumer marketplace launched in 2003, and Alipay, an online payment service, which helped it dominate Chinese e-commerce. Its listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 was one of the largest public share offerings in history up to that point. Today the group spans retail, cloud computing, logistics and digital media, and has become one of the world's biggest technology companies.
Before and after
- 11 May 1999Birth of Sabrina Carpenter
- from 12 June 1999 to 1 June 2001Insurgency in the Preševo Valley
- 12 June 1999Incident at Pristina Airport
- 26 June 1999Construction of Millennium Stadium
- 28 June 1999Launch of Alibaba Group
- July 1999Publication of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- 18 July 1999Discovery of Stephano
- 18 July 1999Discovery of Prospero
- 18 July 1999Discovery of Setebos
More in Science & technology
- 25 April 1953Watson and Crick publish the structure of DNA
- 1971Email
- 1973Mobile phone
- 20 November 1985Creation of Microsoft Windows
- July 2000Discovery of livermorium
- August 2003Discovery of moscovium
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.