Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba.com has spent three-fourths of US$1 billion in cash that Yahoo! Inc, paid for its 40 percent stake last summer, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma said.

Speaking at a search engine conference in Nanjing, Ma said " US$1 billion was paid in but we have spent some US$750 million."

The three-fourths of the US$1 billion has been spent on research & development and other projects.

Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo (L), and Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba.com, ask each other to have a seat at the China Internet Summit 2005 hosted by Alibaba.com, in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, September 10, 2005. Leading CEOs of Internet companies from China and around the world gather together to discuss Chinese Internet commerce and industry growth. [newsphoto]

One of the projects cited by Jack Ma, and reported on by Search Engine Roundtable from Ma's keynote at SES China may involve a more Sino-centric approach to search in China.

Ma commented on the need for unique products for the Chinese market,"We'll roll out products that are really geared for the Chinese market. Search engine technology today is geared for US markets and supports US culture. It would be better to have a customized solution for the 120 million Chinese netizens."