Rakuten was the first e-commerce company (February 1997), just a few months shy before Amazon (may 1997) went public. The competition is still quite strong between the two large companies in Japan. In 2012, Rakuten incorporated the English language to help increase global awareness and hire non-Japanese talent from overseas. In addition, Rakuten aquired several known companies such as Viber, Viki, Buy.com, Kobo, Linkshare, Ebates and OverDrive, to name a few. In Total, Rakuten has about 66 different products. I was one of the lucky offshore talents to be hired to help resolve a lot of their complex, mobile products. Below are some of them:
