It's not clear to me how it's good for me as a consumer to have one company providing me everything. That seems to go wrong more often than it goes well.

As an investor, I can see how a monopolistic behemoth might be good, assuming we ignore possible legal problems. But I'd also worry that a huge company like that would not be able to focus effectively on the probably hundreds or thousands of products and markets in which they must be involved. Huge companies like Exxon, say, are at least focused primarily on energy needs; Amazon on online retailing; Apple or Sony on consumer electronics and software. What is Alibaba focused on? (And yes, the same question could be asked about Google, although search and ads are probably the biggest things.)

What is Alibaba currently really world-class at, OTHER than owning the Chinese market from top to bottom? Owning the Chinese market is probably caused as much by cronyism as by being really good at anything.