a dog-eared town

Yeehaw everyone. It’s like 1999 all over again. Can you feel the love? I mean can you?

This story makes me wonder if the management of Yahoo isn’t smoking a little something.

According to Forbes.com, Yahoo is in “advanced” talks to buy 35% of Alibaba for almost $1 billion. Alibaba declined to comment on the report. Yahoo did not respond to an email seeking comment.

So the Yahoo buy will give it a market value of a little more than 3 BILLION dollars. And why does a foreign company from a communist country where the rules can be changed on the spot deserve this kind of valuation?

Alibaba had sales of $46 million in 2004. If you assume the firm can roughly double that to $100 million in 2005, and that investors would pay as much for Alibaba as for Baidu, the China’s eBay’s (EBAY: news, chart, profile) might be worth $17 billion.

So, on sales of 46 MILLION, we’re going to get a market value of 3 plus BILLION. Man, I am so not doing something right here. But hey, don’t worry, the crash can’t be all that bad, right?