Yahoo sides with Google in China showdown

Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale has issued a statement supporting its cross town rival Google in their dispute with the government of China.  Google apparently believes the Chinese government or its spy agencies were responsible for an attack on its technical infrastructure, which targeted the accounts of human rights activists.  Yahoo issued the following statement:

“We condemn any attempts to infiltrate company networks to obtain user information.  We stand aligned with Google that these kinds of attacks are deeply disturbing and strongly believe that the violation of user privacy is something that we as Internet pioneers must all oppose.”

The issue is sensitive for Yahoo because they provided information from their servers to the Chinese government that resulted in long prison terms for two Chinese journalists.  Yahoo is much more entrenched in China however.  They sold their Internet operations to Alibaba – a Chinese trade portal operator, but retained a 39 percent stake in that company.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Yahoo spokeswoman Nina Blackwell declined on  to say whether its solidarity with Google would cause the company to sell its Alibaba holdings.