The FT reports today that Alibaba, the Chinese business-to-business search giant, has made its first move to acquire a serious foothold in the US following years of sabre rattling, by buying Vendio.com - an e-commerce platform which allows you to share your inventory with Ebay, Google, Shopzilla and Amazon. Figures for the acquisition were not released, other than Alibaba declaring that the acquisition was part of its $100 million investment programme.