It didn't take long - Alibaba Cloud came to Europe. Although Alibaba has a quite efficient payment system that they technically polished in China while processing huge number of transactions on the daily basis, in Europe they started with offering just traditional cloud infrastructure. I can't wait and see what kind of other offers would follow.
How Alibaba presence looks from a consumer perspective? I've got a quick example - during Alibaba's 11.11 event I bought two 5000LM X800 'tactical' torches (they are great for cycling!) for a half price of one. I got them from an eBay seller who most likely proxied Alibaba transaction on that day.
If supply chain, online catalogues, shopping carts, checkouts and delivery of purchased items are all done under the same umbrella (Alibaba), what would happen to current distributors of Chinese goods in Europe and programmers that provide support for their online transactions? How would Amazon and eBay compete with Alibaba?
What kind of services (MaaS, SaaS, PaaS, etc) and APIs would Alibaba provide for its European infrastructure? I hope we'll find it out pretty soon.
