I think part of the reason is that the story is being positioned incorrectly. Yahoo owns 24% of Alibaba, so it's not China vs. Silicon Valley, or any such nonsense.

It's definitely news worthy that they're going to IPO here in the US and they have a HUGE market in China/Asia... Even so, will they be able to crack the US consumer market? Time will tell, but so far, their efforts haven't born fruit.

They have a stealth 'target vertical' shopping experience that's developing right now in the Bay Area, however, they're significantly behind schedule, having trouble integrating teams from several locals and their product is dubiously "useful" at this stage of the game.

All of that being said, eventually they'll find some combination to get a foothold of the US market and it will be interesting to see what happens then as competition heats up.