A new report issued by a Chinese government-funded research organization states Facebook and Western social networking sites pose spy risks, and these problems should make social media mavens worry about possible clampdowns on social networking sites in China.

China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping has published its review comments for the Class A mapping qualification on its official website and has approved 13 companies, including Baidu.com and Sogou.com, to operate Internet map services in China.

In case you've not needed to Google your own name, check the weather or conduct a search for pictures of Justin Bieber you'll probably have missed the Pac-Man game that has appeared in place of the Google logo on their homepage -- and if you have seen it then well done for navigating away. But from the moment you finish reading this post your productive day will officially be over.

Taobao, a Chinese shopping Web site, and Yahoo Inc.'s site in Japan (Yahoo Japan) are teaming up to allow businesses that use either site to sell through the other as well.

Google has said that it has closed its search engine business on the Chinese mainland, in a move to avoid censoring its Chinese-language search engine. The richest internet firm in the world made the annoncement on Tuesday, after months of tension with China, although it will keep some research and development, and sales offices in the country.

Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking.

Business-to-consumer IT e-commerce site 360buy.com announced March 11 that it has completed the acquisition of SK Telecom's (NYSE:SKM, 017670.SEO) Beijing-based business-to-consumer shopping site Qianxun.com, reports Sohu. 360buy.com did not reveal the price of the acquisition, but a company insider said that compensation was between RMB 3 million and RMB 4 million, the report said.

It is said that QIANXUN.COM, the online shopping website, already started cutting its staff. There are only about 80 employees remaining now. The redundancy will end after the Spring Festival. Previous, one insider of QIANXUN.COM said that SK is planning to stop investing QIANXUN.COM and the website also stoped its CPS advertisement.

Baidu CEO Robin Li said in a recent media interview that Baidu did not deliberatly strive for users. In addition, he also said that Baidu has not thought to learn Google.

In the past few days we have heard many rumors about Google China and its local employees. Some reported that we have shut down the offices in China and some claimed our Chinese staff would lose their jobs in the near future. These rumors are not true! Chinese employees of Google.cn are, as usual, working in the office, discussing product development and talking with our clients.