What will the internet conglomerate¹ of tomorrow look like?

未来的互联网集团将是什么样？

Two models — the Chinese and the American — are in full flood. They may also be converging². And though they look like they have plenty of room to run, accidents of politics and personality are never far away.

眼下中国和美国这两种模式正迅猛发展，它们也可能会趋同。虽然它们看似有足够的增长空间，但与政治以及创始人个性相关的事件总是如影随形。

Alibaba’s surprisingly bullish revenue forecast earlier this month — it predicted growth this year a full 10 per cent above expectations — was taken by investors³ as powerful affirmation of a strategy that has at times looked scattershot.

阿里巴巴(Alibaba)上月公布了今年的收入预测，其预测的增幅整整超过预期10%，这一意外的利好消息被投资者认为是对一个有时看上去漫无目的的战略的强大肯定。

Reflecting that China has a domestic economy ripe for digital innovation, and a business culture that does not recognise boundaries, Alibaba has shied away from setting limits to its scope. Like local rivals Tencent and Baidu, it has been making investments in many more businesses as it extends its reach (the most recent was putting another $1bn into Southeast Asian ecommerce player Lazada).

阿里巴巴没有对自己设限，这反映了中国国内经济已为数字创新做好准备，而且其商业文化也不承认边界。与本土竞争对手腾讯(Tencent)和百度(Baidu)一样，阿里巴巴一直对更多商业领域进行投资，以扩张自己的版图，最近一笔投资是对东南亚电商企业Lazada追加10亿美元。

But for the financial markets, Alibaba has been at pains to paint a more coherent picture than often appears from the outside. At the heart of the story is a giant data factory. It sucks up information from customers of its many services and uses this to refine its offerings (and help merchants find more customers).

但对于金融市场，阿里巴巴一直在用心勾勒一幅比外界看起来更清晰的画面。其策略核心是一个庞大的数据工厂，它从旗下许多服务那里吸收顾客信息，再用这些信息来优化自己的产品，并帮助商家找到更多顾客。

This raises two questions: How much data are enough — and how much will regulators consider to be too much?

这就提出了两个问题：多少数据算够呢？以及，到什么程度监管机构会认为太多了呢？

In China, there appear to be few limits. Alibaba faces little pushback from either consumers or regulators. This is partly because the potential access to vast commercial repositories of personal information has obvious appeal to government agencies. As long as this close alignment⁴ of interest between company and state continues, the way looks clear.

在中国，这方面似乎没什么限制。阿里巴巴极少面临来自消费者或监管机构的反弹。一部分是因为对于政府机构来说，可以访问庞大的商业个人信息资料库有着明显的吸引力。只要企业与国家之间仍然存在这种密切的利益联盟，这种方式看上去就畅通无阻。