The Magic of Alibaba

The biggest talk on Wall Street this week has been tomorrow's IPO from the Chinese Internet giant Alibaba. The offering could raise as much as $25 billion, which would make it the biggest IPO in history. Facebook's IPO two years ago, which was probably the most talked-about public offering before this one, raised a mere $16 billion.

The Facebook IPO was not the largest American offering, though. Visa's IPO, shortly before the financial meltdown of 2008, raised $17.9 billion, which is also the worldwide record - at least until tomorrow. 

Will Alibaba really be worth more than that? It's often compared to Google, but as primarily an e-commerce site, it's actually closer to Amazon.com or eBay. It actually handles more transactions than Amazon.com and eBay combined, and is now China's largest retailer of any kind. That's a monster.