Youku's stock jumped 161 percent on its first day, the best debut on the New York Stock Exchange since Baidu in 2005. Shares sold at $12.80 closed at $33.44. YouTube was blocked in China, and Youku had become the place where hundreds of millions of people watched clips, dramas and movies for free. Its December 2010 offering raised $203 million and valued a company that had never turned a profit at more than $3 billion.

Excellent and Cool

Victor Koo, a former president of the portal Sohu, founded Youku in Beijing in 2006. The name means roughly excellent and cool. Youku started as a home for user videos, then spent heavily on licensed Chinese TV series and films, which kept viewers watching for hours. Ads before and during videos paid the bills. The bet was that Chinese viewers would move from television to screens they carried, and that the biggest library would win the audience.

Merger, Then Alibaba

Youku listed on the NYSE under YOKU and priced above its planned range of $9 to $11. Rising license costs ate its margins, and its fiercest rival was Tudou, another video site. In 2012 the two merged in an all-stock deal and became Youku Tudou. Alibaba bought a large stake in 2014. In 2016 Alibaba bought the rest at $27.60 a share, in a deal valued at about $4.8 billion, and took the company private.

Cover: A Box at the Kabuki Theater, from the illustrated book "Guide to the Actors' Dressing Rooms (Yakusha gakuya tsu)", Kitagawa Utamaro. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a box at the theater (a nation watching).