Alibaba earnings have the Chinese company closing the gap with Amazon

``Alibaba is on a tear. Since the start of 2017, New York-listed shares for China's largest e-commerce company have jumped almost 90% in value, and the company's stock got another big bump today (Aug. 17) as it reported profits that nearly doubled the same quarter last year. The surge not only made founder and CEO Jack Ma about $1 billion richer, according to Forbes' real-time billionaire tracker, it has also brought Alibaba within a few steps of catching Jeff Bezos's American-grown e-commerce monster, Amazon, in market value.''