After 3 months of plotting, Alibaba has unleashed a game changer

Author | Zhou Zhiyu, Chai Xuchen

Editor | Zhang Xiaoling

After burning through hundreds of billions in funding, Meituan and Douyin thought they were the only ones left at the poker table. However, Alibaba has been watching closely from the sidelines.

On September 10, Alibaba celebrated its 26th anniversary. A piece on the chessboard laid out by Jack Ma 11 years ago—Amap—was suddenly activated by the current CEO Eddie Wu. It is no longer content to be a silent navigation tool but has come charging into the front lines against Meituan and Douyin with over 1.1 billion yuan in subsidies and a so-called "Street Ranking" that cannot be gamed.

At this moment, it has been exactly eleven years since Jack Ma spent nearly $1.5 billion to acquire Amap, enduring external pressures of "not understanding." That seemingly idle move aimed at the future has now become a decisive factor in stirring the entire battlefield.

What Amap aims to compete for is not just transactions but the power to define the next generation of consumption scenarios. It will also work alongside Taobao Flash Sale to become a crucial lever for Alibaba to reshape local life.

This intention to fundamentally rewrite the rules of the game signals that Alibaba, known for its wolf-like nature and surprise attacks, is returning to the center of the battlefield.

And this time, the story it tells is entirely different. Alibaba will no longer be just an online e-commerce empire but a dual giant exploring the digital future of AI with one hand while activating the physical world of commercial business with the other. Its new value lies not only in cloud computing power but also in the vitality of every street on the ground.

Amap Takes the Lead

Wall Street Journal learned that since the end of June this year, a project team from Amap has been stationed at Alibaba's global headquarters in Hangzhou, even opening a separate space in Building C4 of the Xixi Park. According to insiders, the confidentiality level is very high, and other departments cannot enter.

Since then, rumors about Alibaba's confidential project have been swirling. Some speculate it is an upgrade campaign for Flash Sale, while others guess there are significant moves in AI. Now, three months later, the mystery has been unveiled: Alibaba has chosen Amap to "scan the streets."

It is understood that the core strategy of the "Amap Street Ranking" is to ensure that it is a non-gamable list through users' real "behavior + credit." Amap CEO Guo Ning believes that authenticity is the lifeblood of the ranking, and enhancing consumer trust helps boost consumer confidence. He stated that the "Amap Street Ranking" will never be commercialized and will introduce the Alipay Sesame Credit system to filter out false and noisy reviews.

From the perspective of insiders, the "Amap Street Ranking" is essentially an innovation in the offline service credit system. Merchants can distance themselves from operational undercurrents like "brushing scores for traffic" and "gifting for good reviews," allowing well-managed but less skilled shops to be seen by more people. Guo Ning hopes this move can create an ecosystem where good money drives out bad money, reducing consumers' selection costs.

This is not mere talk. The data for the ranking comes from 51.32 million real users who walked a total of 22.8 billion kilometers over the past year, filtering out 1.18 million stores that users frequently visited from 1.3 billion navigation actions. Thus, unique categories like "Tire Wear Ranking" and "Repeat Customer Ranking" have emerged. The former reflects the attraction of users willing to cross half a city to visit; the latter represents the most straightforward recognition of taste and quality It is worth mentioning that before Gaode's "street sweeping," its competitors had already launched mature products such as "Must-Eat List" and "Black Pearl Restaurant Guide." However, Alibaba's determination to bet on this has been set, and in addition to mobilizing the capabilities of the entire group, Gaode has also introduced a subsidy strategy to accelerate market penetration.

On the day the "Street Sweeping List" was released, Gaode announced the launch of the "Good Store Support Program," preparing consumption vouchers of 200 million yuan and 950 million yuan for travel and transactions, respectively; Gaode will also provide 50 million in precise exposure for quality small stores through homepage AI recommendations and hot search term pushes; at the same time, it will invest 30 million yuan in content creation incentives.

It can be said that Gaode has injected catalysts into almost all aspects of in-store transactions this time. Currently, the consensus within Alibaba is to cultivate Gaode into an offline entry point comparable to Taobao. This "overt strategy" has actually been brewing for a long time.

Gaode's entry has been defined internally as an S-level project on par with "Taobao Flash Sale." Sources close to Gaode revealed to Wall Street News that the previously focused in-store group buying platform "Koubei" had already been restarted months ago. Going forward, Gaode's in-store business will clearly move towards transactions, with food being the most frequent entry point.

From now on, Gaode is no longer just a simple navigation software in people's minds, but has become a key link for Alibaba to connect real consumption and transaction scenarios.

Currently, although the flames of the takeaway war have somewhat subsided, the tug-of-war among Ele.me, Meituan, and Douyin continues, with no party daring to relax in the competition for entry points. However, Alibaba is unwilling to fall into a simple war of attrition; the latest financial report has boosted internal morale, and to capitalize on this momentum, Alibaba needs to enter businesses with incremental growth and greater imaginative space.

Over the past four years, Douyin's ability to overtake in local life services has been attributed to its massive user base and traffic tilt. This is also an advantage for Gaode. Guo Ning revealed for the first time that Gaode Map covers over 7 million restaurant locations nationwide, with an average of 120 million life service-related searches per day and an average of 13 million navigations to life service categories daily.

Clearly, Gaode already possesses a large user base and high-frequency usage scenarios, and its connection to local life is even closer.

Industry insiders believe that when users utilize Gaode, they often have clear travel and destination consumption needs. Deeply integrating in-store services with map navigation functions can naturally reach users, forming a closed loop of "finding a location - navigation - in-store consumption." This is smoother and more efficient than starting from scratch to establish a new platform or guiding users to in-store consumption on Taobao or Tmall.

In summary, with its user base, platform capabilities, and strategic support from Alibaba Group, Gaode has become the ideal "first step" for Alibaba to expand its in-store business. Informed sources revealed that Ele.me is also testing in-store business in some regions, while Taobao Flash Sale is exploring how to follow up and collaborate.

Going forward, Gaode will serve as a model for local business and can achieve deeper integration with other products under the group. It can be said that Alibaba's counterattack strategy has just begun.

Giant Battle

In Alibaba's battle sequence, the victory of one campaign often serves as the prologue to another, larger battle.

At the end of August, Alibaba's e-commerce business group CEO Jiang Fan spoke at the earnings conference about how "Taobao Flash Sale" won key points in instant retail. Just over a week later, on September 10th—a date of special significance for the company—it quickly shifted its focus to another more competitive and future-relevant field: local living.

In the past, Alibaba attempted to penetrate local living through Taobao and Alipay, but user perception was always misaligned. Meanwhile, Amap had already established itself in users' daily lives with its indispensable tool attributes. Now, what Alibaba needs to do is not to make users download a new app with great effort, but to leverage Amap to build a fully functional consumption city.

All these actions ultimately point to the "big consumption platform" vision proposed by group CEO Eddie Wu. If "Taobao Flash Sale" is the pillar that meets users' home delivery needs, then Amap becomes the key hub that connects all destination scenarios, completing the last piece of Alibaba's consumption map.

Alibaba's return breaks the long-standing narrative of a duopoly between Meituan and Douyin in the local living battlefield. The players at the table have not changed, but the nature of the game, as well as their respective expressions, are now completely different.

Meituan feels the chill of being attacked from both sides for the first time. With Douyin's continuous offensive in front and Alibaba influencing user decisions under the banner of trust behind, Meituan quickly "restarted" its quality takeaway service on the same day as Amap's press conference, launching "AI + real high scores" and offering substantial subsidies.

Meanwhile, Douyin, which only began advancing its local business in 2021, is leveraging its traffic advantage to launch a rapid offensive, with this year's GMV target reaching 900 billion yuan. It has also been focusing on "AI + quality takeaway" to fill its own gaps and compete with Meituan.

The battlefield has thus become subtle. In the past, the war for local living was about capturing user perception to become the sole, dominant entry point for lifestyle services. Now, with the segmentation of user behavior, the focus of competition is on the most valuable and critical node in the fragmented process of users completing consumption across platforms.

Alibaba's move aims to influence users' choice outcomes through the rankings measured by Amap's real footsteps, and to use this as a fulcrum to pry open and seize the entire transaction loop.

Amap's current strategy of "only doing content" is clearly not the endgame. As Alibaba continues to deepen its in-store business, it will inevitably cut into the transaction segment. Even on Amap's soil, a consumption entry point as large as Taobao could emerge.

While the market has almost focused all of Alibaba's narrative on AI, Amap's entry provides an equally important yet more down-to-earth dimension. This dimension is rooted in the streets rather than the cloud. While AI defines the future of the digital world, Amap's mission is to reconstruct and activate the physical world filled with real transactions and experiences through technology.

In the future, Alibaba's value will not only depend on the success or failure of the AI race but also on whether it can prove that it can seamlessly link the digital and physical worlds, becoming the true infrastructure of the big consumption era Regardless of how the final battle unfolds, Gaode's bold move has already declared: the Alibaba, once known for its wolf-like nature and belief in "All in," is regaining its offensive posture under the leadership of Eddie Wu. This not only marks the beginning of a new war in the local life services sector but may also signify the arrival of a new era in the competition among Chinese internet giants