Two quick ones for the road because I am going on vacation for 10 days and really need to get out of the office right now. But these were both worthy of posting.Read more »

There has been much yammering about civilizing the Internet here in China for the past year. We've had it from Hu Jintao, we've had it very recently from the Ministry of Public Security. And we get it on a pretty much nonstop basis from the press. Unfortunately morality seems be outrunning the actual laws. It turns out that you can still have a more-or-less legal n*de Web chat in China. Could this be a new sideline business for me?Read more »

For the past year, China has been a minefield for American Internet firms. They just can't seem to get a break. eBay has retreated, and a deal to go into business with Tom.com seems to be fraying. Google just got through its IME mini-scandal, and it still lags behind Baidu.

Most famously, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco were all called before a US congressional hearing to answer charges that they are complicit in Chinese censorship and the jailing of Chinese dissidents. That latter issue has arisen again to cause more trouble for Yahoo, who have just been sued by the family of one such imprisoned dissident.
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As anyone who has partied too hard knows, you can have too much of a good thing. China's video-sharing sites have been partying like mad for the last year. It looks like the party might be coming to an end. If so, you can bet a wicked hangover is just around the corner.Read more »

Turns out its really more "Sohu-y". Oops.

My good friend Sumner Lemon, who used to cover China technology for IDG News Service out of Beijing but is now leading the tropical life down in Singapore, has been covering a developing scandal concerning Google's new Chinese input method editor (IME). It turns out that the word database may have been lifted from Sohu's Sogou pinyin IME without --how shall we put it?-- their express written consent.Read more »