Yahoo should soon have about $150 million more to its name.  By selling 57.48 million shares, the Sunnyvale-based company is liquidating its stake in Chinese business-to-business site Alibaba.com and collecting a tidy profit.

A few questions surrounding the departure of Kai-Fu Lee from Google China have now been answered.  Lee isn’t leaving due to any perceived failure – indeed, he thinks Google China is doing rather well – and it turns out that he’s landed a position as the head of a venture capital firm. 

The man over whom Microsoft and Google practically started a war in 2005 is now quitting that second company.  Kai-Fu Lee, the president of Google’s operations in China, will leave his post sometime this month.

In case you were in search of one, here’s another good reason for Eric Schmidt to have stepped down from Apple’s board of directors: devices relying on the Android operating system are about to take a run at the iPhone in China. 

The second quarter of this year didn’t go so well for Google in China.  According to a new report, the American search giant’s market share shrunk a bit, while that of its Chinese equivalent, Baidu, managed to get larger.

iResearch found that over three-fourths of all searches in China (specifically, 75.7 percent) were performed using Baidu in the second quarter of 2009.  This represents a gain of 1.6 percent compared to the first quarter.

Discovery Communications, parent company of the Discovery Channel, and Baidu, China’s largest search engine, have partnered to launch a new website focused on science and technology.

"The launch of discovery.baidu.com represents an important step in building stronger brand awareness and consumer loyalty for Discovery in the key Chinese market," said Greg Ricca, President and CEO, Discovery Networks International.

China has banned websites that feature online games, which glamorize violence, saying violators will be "severely punished," state media said on Tuesday.

China’s Ministry of Culture said such games violated regulation on Internet administration, because they "advocate obscenity, gambling, or violence," and "undermine morality and Chinese traditional culture," a posting on the ministry’s website said.

China on Thursday expressed anger at Google for providing links on its English language search site that lead to vulgar content that violated the country’s law.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang dodged a question about whether the government had played a role in recent disruptions to Google sites within China. He did make it clear that the government was angry with Google.

Baidu is big; its share of the Chinese search market is close to 60 or even 70 percent, depending on which statistics firm you favor.  And Baidu may be set to grow still more, as the company’s CFO, Jennifer Li, seems to be rather open-minded on the subject of making acquisitions.

The Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred on June 4th, 1989, and it appears that the Chinese government is going to mark the 20th anniversary in its own special way.  Within the country, access to just about every major social media site has been blocked.

As you probably know, China is the most populous country in the world, and it happens to be home to the biggest wireless market, too.  Google might be on the edge of something huge, then, as there’s word that an Android-based phone will go on sale in China sometime next month. 

Chinese and Russian cyberspies have hacked into the U.S. electrical grid and have left behind software that could be used to interfere with the system, a report said Wednesday.

According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. intelligence officials said cyberspies had penetrated the system repeatedly last year, without damaging it. The officials warned they could try to disrupt it during a crisis or a war.

So much for the time, money, and compromises on censorship Google’s committed in the region thus far.  Plus its new music venture.  An analyst said this morning that Google’s Chinese arm won’t do so well, anyway. 

Google has partnered with the major record labels to launch a free online music service in China that is ad supported.

Initially the service will offer 350,000 songs from Warner Music, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment and 14 independent labels. The number of songs will increase to 1.1 million in the coming months, said Gary Chen, chief executive of Google’s partner www.Top100.cn.

Remember all the discussion of China and its approach to the Internet that was heard around the Beijing Olympics? It seems that a lot of that type of coverage has slid into the background until recently. Apparently once Google gets involved these items become news again.

Internet users in China have been denied access to YouTube since late last night.

"Many people have a false impression that the Chinese government fears the Internet. In fact it is just the opposite," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.

Qin maintains that China’s 300 million Internet users and 100 million blogs proved that "China’s Internet is open enough, but also needs to be regulated by law in order to prevent the spread of harmful information and for national security."

Imagine any sort of sports team trying to come from behind in a 77-17 game.  Now, imagine that the losing team’s players get sidelined every so often for no apparent reason.  This appears to be analogous to Google’s situation as the search giant’s properties were blocked again in China. 

It’s rather unlikely that Google will ever dominate the Chinese search market; Baidu isn’t even close to being beat.  Just the same, a new report indicates the American search company is at least moving in the right direction, gaining an amount of ground last year that could be viewed as impressive. 

China is continuing its Internet crackdown on pornography in what it claims is an effort to protect youth from vulgarity while maintaining it has nothing to do with quieting political dissent.

The past year wasn’t a bad one for the Chinese search market.  A new report from Analysys International points to impressive growth in overall revenues, and the top two players both managed to increase their presence and popularity.

The number of Internet users in China rose nearly 42 percent by the end of 2008 from the previous year, putting its online population at 298 million, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

China continues to have the world’s largest Internet population and 91 percent of users have broadband connections.