China's IPO-bound Alibaba group is acquiring the remaining shares in the mobile browser maker UCWeb for an undisclosed amount, reports Reuters. The deal is primarily stock with a small cash component although the acquisition price or terms were not disclosed. Alibaba also claims this is the biggest deal in Chinese Internet history, surpassing Baidu's $1.9 billion acquisition of 91 Wireless last year. Alibaba had previously mentioned in its IPO filing that it owns 66% stake in UCWeb in form of convertible preferred shares, which the company had acquired over several years through several rounds of investments, the last of which was completed in April 2014. The company's total investment in UCWeb was at $539.3 million (RMB3.358 billion) as of December 31, 2013. Post acquisition, Alibaba and UCWeb will form the UCWeb Mobile Business Group which will apparently be responsible for Internet browsers, search services, location-based services, its mobile gaming platform, mobile application distribution and mobile literature services. UCWeb CEO Yu Yongfu will act as the chairman of this business group and will be part of Alibaba's "strategic decision-making committee". Alibaba had earlier mentioned in its IPO filing that through its UCWeb investment, it is able to leverage the company's expertise as a developer and operator of mobile web browser to improve its non e-commerce mobile offerings like mobile search. In April this year, Alibaba had also formed a joint venture with UCWeb to launch a mobile content search engine called Shenma. UCWeb in India UCWeb had setup its second headquarters in India in April last year, in a bid to push its UC mobile…
