Alibaba, China’s e-commerce giant, has set aside $28.26 billion for investment in cloud computing infrastructure and technology over the next three years in a bid to close the gap on Amazon and Microsoft, especially in foreign countries where competition between these players is most intense. This accelerated project will also dovetail with Alibaba’s expanded activities in mobile applications following the formation in February 2020 of its dedicated 5G Alibaba XG Lab. The objective of the XG Lab is to expedite development and deployment of applications often hosted in the cloud that exploit emerging 5G networks, both in China and beyond. Like other vendors, Alibaba tried to put a Covid-19 shine on the cloud announcement, portraying it as a response to…