Tudou went public with a divorce in its risk factors. The ex-wife of founder Gary Wang had sued him for a share of the company that held Tudou's operating license, seeking to divide 76 percent of his stake. The prospectus warned that the case clouded Tudou's control of its own business. The Shanghai video site, whose name means potato, had launched in April 2005. By 2011 it was fighting crowded rivals for viewers and advertisers.

First to Share Video

Gary Wang launched Tudou.com in April 2005. A 2010 Gartner report named it the first user-generated video sharing site launched in China. The bet was that Chinese internet users would want to post their own clips and watch everyone else's. Tudou grew into a broad online video platform paid for by advertising. By 2011 it also streamed to phones, offering mobile video channels on China Unicom's wireless video platform from April of that year.

Merged Within a Year

Tudou priced its IPO at $29 per American depositary share in August 2011 and listed on Nasdaq as TUDO. Its largest rival, Youku, already traded in New York. In March 2012 the two agreed to merge, and the deal closed that August. Tudou became a subsidiary of the renamed Youku Tudou Inc., and each Tudou share was swapped for 7.177 Youku Class A shares. Alibaba bought Youku Tudou outright in 2016.

Cover: The Potato Harvest, Charles Samuel Keene. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a potato harvest (Tudou means potato).