On "Eyeing China's Alibaba" 4/5/05 Marketwatch Article

I was browsing Yahoo! Finance today and found this Marketwatch article, entitled "Eyeing China's Alibaba." While its main point, that U.S. internet companies are pouring large sums of money to buy into China, is valid, the article was scattered and, in places, made misleading generalizations. For example, the article states that "there are 1.3 billion people in China, and for better or for worse -- they're on the cusp of becoming the next me-too, want-it-all, consuming society." While this may hold true for parts of China (which, granted, means hundreds of millions of people), the majority of Chinese live in rural areas and earn extremely little.

The article goes on to state that "yet[,] for all that opportunity[,] the combined market cap of Chinese Internet companies is a fraction of the U.S. Internet companies. The big three -- Yahoo, Google, eBay - have a combined market cap of $150 billion. The current big three in China -- Shanda, Sina and NetEase -- are worth a combined total of $5 billion, with Shanda accounting for $2.2 billion of that."

This statement disregards YHOO, GOOG, and EBAY's sizeable global operations (which includes their respective Chinese operations), and more generally pushes aside the fact that YHOO, GOOG, and EBAY dwarf SNDA, SINA, and NTES in very real terms.

Maybe I'm being picky, but I think media outlets should be more complete than this.

YHOO:
Total 2004 Revenues (000's): $3,574,517
US Revenues: $2,653,437 (74.23%)
International Revenues: $921,080 (25.77%)
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Market Capitalization (4/8/2005): $48.22B
P/S (4/8/2005): 13.49
Trailing P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 60.35
Forward P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 51.12

GOOG:
Total 2004 Revenues (000's): $3,189,223
US Revenues: ~$2,104,887(66%)
International Revenues: ~$1,084,336(34%)
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Market Capitalization (4/8/2005): $52.72B
P/S (4/8/2005): 16.53
Trailing P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 133.18
Forward P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 37.58

EBAY:
Total 2004 Revenues (000's): $3,271,309
US Marketplace Revenues: $1,399,848 (42.79%)
Intl. Marketplace Revenues: $1,173,759 (35.88%)
Payment Revenues: $697,702 (21.33%)
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Market Capitalization (4/8/2005): $47.28B
P/S (4/8/2005): 14.45
Trailing P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 61.68
Forward P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 34.81

SNDA:
Total 2004 Revenues (000's): $165,189
Online Game Revenues: $154,197
Others Revenues: $10,992
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Market Capitalization (4/8/2005): $2.11B
P/S (4/8/2005): 12.78
Trailing P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 28.99
Forward P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 17.39

SINA:
Total 2004 Revenues (000's): $199,987
Advertising Revenues: $65,417
Non-Advertising Revenues: $134,570
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Market Capitalization (4/8/2005): $1.54B
P/S (4/8/2005): 7.73
Trailing P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 26.28
Forward P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 22.37

NTES:
Total 2004 Revenues (000's): $115,786
Online Gaming Revenues: $75,991
Advertising Revenues: $20,667
WVAS Revenues: $19,128
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Market Capitalization (4/8/2005): $1.55B
P/S (4/8/2005): 13.47
Trailing P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 30.61
Forward P/E (4/8/2005, according to Y!): 16.49