RSF says Yahoo has been censoring the Chinese-language version of its popular internet portal for several years and that rival firm Google is planning to do the same.

RSF said the two US companies were “making compromises that directly threaten freedom of expression” in order to advance their business in China. The lobby group described the actions of the two search engines as “irresponsible”.

The Chinese language version of Yahoo has become extremely popular with mainland Chinese users over the past few years, while Google recently acquired a major shareholding in Baidu, a Chinese-run search engine. Yahoo is preparing to launch a new search engine targeted at mainland users to be called Yisou, which will censor search results as directed by the Beijing government. To date Google has refused to censor its search engine and this has resulted in it being blocked in China periodically.

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