Is the e-commerce leader now facing a life or death situation? Behind the successive collapse of the three major e-commerce companies

Alibaba, a top Internet company that is well-known in China, has now reached a critical moment of life and death. Can you believe it?

As an Internet giant spanning multiple businesses, Alibaba has three main pillar businesses: Internet technology business represented by Alibaba Cloud Computing, financial business represented by Ant Financial, and the most important e-commerce business represented by Taobao Tmall. These three pillars have been the leaders in their respective fields in the past few years or even more than a decade, bringing Alibaba immeasurable benefits and financial prospects. However, in the past two years, these three pillars have also turned over one after another.

The first to fail was Ant Financial. This was the biggest event at the end of last year. Ant Financial was considered the champion of China's Internet finance industry, and its listing attracted much attention.

As a result, in November, the Shanghai Stock Exchange urgently halted Ant Financial's listing process, and subsequently a large amount of negative news about Ant Financial was exposed. Only then did the people realize that the prosperity of Ant Financial was built on huge systemic financial risks. Once Ant Financial collapsed, it would be the biggest financial disaster for the country and society since the reform and opening up. The central bank halted Ant Financial's listing and intervened in supervision to curb the risk in time before it happened.

Ant Financial's reputation has taken a sharp turn for the worse, from a sought-after Internet finance unicorn to a lackey of capitalists who made money and ran away, in less than half a year. Now Ant Financial has been brought under the supervision of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and is subject to the same restrictions as regular banking business. Its former glory is no longer there.

E-commerce business is Alibaba's top priority, and it is also in jeopardy with the recent swift ban of Viya.

Taobao and Tmall, which have always dominated the e-commerce market, have been chased by Pinduoduo, JD.com, and even Douyin in the past two years. Live streaming e-commerce is Taobao's way of dealing with Pinduoduo and Douyin, and it is the next e-commerce outlet that Alibaba is betting on. And Wei Ya is the representative that Alibaba has spent a lot of energy and resources to promote. She is the biggest achievement of the e-commerce live streaming industry and Alibaba's answer to the epoch-making question of where the next e-commerce outlet will be.

After the tax evasion case broke out, major brands quickly severed ties with Wei Ya, and Taobao and Douyin live broadcast rooms successively banned Wei Ya. This version of Alibaba's answer was completely invalid, which also meant that Taobao's reliance on a comeback was gone, and the situation of one superpower and many strong players in the e-commerce industry was about to be turned upside down.

In fact, many people don’t know the news that the third carriage collapsed. Some time ago, the Alibaba Cloud technical team discovered a technical vulnerability in Apache. More than 90% of browsers run on the wab logic provided by Apache. That is to say, once this vulnerability is exploited by hackers, the impact will be worldwide. This vulnerability can even allow attackers to access the network server without any password. How terrible is that!

So the Alibaba Cloud team immediately reported the vulnerability to the Apache Software Foundation, which is an American organization. And then, nothing happened. It was not until more than ten days later that Apache released a patch announcement to fix the vulnerability , and China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology learned about the existence of the vulnerability.

Alibaba actually notified American agencies and even the US government first, but did not say a word to domestic regulatory agencies. We even learned about the vulnerability and Alibaba, which reported the vulnerability, from the other party’s announcement. There was a gap of more than ten days in between. More than ten days, my friends, how much can the US government do with this vulnerability in more than ten days? In wartime, this is definitely treason. Alibaba, what country are you from?

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology immediately punished Alibaba Cloud. According to the "Network Product Security Vulnerability Management Regulations" promulgated in the middle of this year, Alibaba Cloud was suspended from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's network security threat information sharing platform for 6 months. Cloud services attach the most importance to security, and the security of corporate and government data is given top priority. Alibaba Cloud's actions have planted a huge mine with endless consequences for its future business.

So far, Alibaba's three major business pillars have all been hit hard. Facing the aggressiveness of other e-commerce platforms, what will Alibaba's next response be? We will have to wait and see.

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