The Tao of Yahoo!

Yahoo!, in a bold, strategic and expected move, paid $1 billion in cash for a 40% stake in Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba, a bid to grab a piece of the fast-growing and fast-evolving Internet market in Asia.

The deal puts Yahoo!, which everywhere else in the world is the leader in online media and lags only Google(GOOG Quote) in online search advertising, among the lead players in China's burgeoning ecommerce market, a sector it has been happy to leave to eBay(EBAY Quote) and others in Yahoo!'s home U.S. market.

Yahoo!, which as of March 31 had $3.8 billion in cash and short-term investments, will pay for the Alibaba deal in cash. In the past, Yahoo! paid $1.7 billion for search-technology pioneer Overture in 2003 as well as $3.5 billion for Geocities and $5 billion for Broadcast.com in 1999. ...