Vertical Yahoo! in China

Xinhua today describes Yahoo! China as "on the prowl" for acquisitions. In an effort to catch-up with Baidu and Google "We are considering merging vertical search engines into our service package as we are already set on better combining Yahoo China's service with our e-commerce resources," according to spokesman Tao Ran.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! was also in the news in Hong Kong where it was cleared by the Privacy Commissioner of breaching local laws in the case of jailed journalist Shi Tao. Shi's Yahoo! e-mails were handed over to Chinese authorities after he was arrested for allegedly "illegally providing state secrets overseas". Rebecca MacKinnon gives good, balanced coverage of the complicated issues surrounding this on her RConversation blog.