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.

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.

BJEDU.CC specially launched an SNS (home.bjedu.cc) for primary and secondary students in Beijing. The site claims to use real-name registration system.

Home appliance retailer Suning's e-commerce platform SUNING.CN formally went live today and the retailer giant also announced its future development strategy of occupying more than 20% of the home appliance e-commerce market to make it China's largest 3C (computer, communications, consumer electronics) home appliance B2C website.

In many respects, information has never been so free. There are more ways to spread more ideas to more people than at any moment in history. Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.

One week after announced its withdrawal from the China market, the U.S. Internet giant said its business in China once again return to normal operation. After the statement, the staff had a one-week holiday so that Google could run the tests and scans to ensure safe and reliable network," Google In response to queries Agence France-Presse said, "Google China staff already went back to work . Everything goes well. "

Google has today revealed that in mid-December, they, along with a number of other large companies in the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors, were targeted in a sophisticated cyber-attack. This attack on their infrastructure originated in China, and resulted in the theft of intellectual property.

Baidu, China's largest Internet search engine, was the target of a four-hour cyber attack yesterday, the most severe since it was established in 1999. The company said it had restored services for most Internet users by 6 pm. A hacker group, calling itself Iranian Cyber Army, hijacked Baidu's home page and left a message in Farsi saying that the act was a protest against foreign involvement in Iran's domestic politics.

Microsoft announced on Wednesday that the beta of Office 2010 is now publicly available from the company's Web site and from CNET Download.com.

A phishing attack is targeting thousands of web-based email users, according to the BBC and Read Write Web. Tens of thousands of users of each site have already been victimized, with the usernames and passwords available on lists.

Following the announcement of the closure of its social networking service Yahoo Guanxi a few days ago, China Yahoo has now announced on its official forum that it will shut its space service on October 30, 2009.

Chinese B2B e-commerce group Alibaba.com has announced that based on its "Big Taobao" strategy, the group will merge its lifestyle website Yahoo Koubei into its Internet shopping platform Taobao.com.

TOMATOLEI.COM, the website offering downloads of pirate Windows XP Tomato Edition, was changed into a navigation website. On the top of the website, there is a word saying: "TOMATOLEI will try to keep moving forward on the right way and TOMATOLEI needs your support."