HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A consortium led by Walt Disney Co is in advanced talks to buy into China’s largest in-bus digital media and advertising company, a deal that could offer the U.S. entertainment giant a new platform to promote Mickey Mouse in China, three sources told Reuters.

Google Inc, the world’s No.1 Internet search company, which threatened to quit China last month over censorship and hacking concerns, was among investors in the Disney-led consortium, the sources said on Monday.

The consortium planned to buy a stake of between 30 and 40 percent in Bus Online for more than $100 million via a purchase of old and new shares to be issued by the company in private placements, said the sources.

“Disney wants to be a strategic partner not just a financial investor in Bus Online as Disney is going to do many things in China — for example, the theme park to be opened in Shanghai,” said one of the sources.

HONG KONG/SHANGHAI, Feb 8 (Reuters) – A consortium led by Walt Disney Co <DIS.N> is in advanced talks to buy into China’s largest in-bus digital media and advertising company, a deal that could offer the U.S. entertainment giant a new platform to promote Mickey Mouse in China, three sources told Reuters.

Google Inc <GOOG.O>, the world’s No.1 Internet search company, which threatened to quit China last month over censorship and hacking concerns, was among investors in the Disney-led consortium, the sources said on Monday.

The consortium planned to buy a stake of between 30 and 40 percent in Bus Online for more than $100 million via a purchase of old and new shares to be issued by the company in private placements, said the sources.

“Disney wants to be a strategic partner not just a financial investor in Bus Online as Disney is going to do many things in China — for example, the theme park to be opened in Shanghai,” said one of the sources.

HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A consortium led by Walt Disney Co. is in advanced talks to buy into China’s largest in-bus digital media and advertising company, a deal that could offer the U.S. entertainment giant a new platform to promote Mickey Mouse in China, three sources told Reuters.

Google Inc., the world’s No.1 Internet search company, which threatened to quit China last month over censorship and hacking concerns, was among investors in the Disney-led consortium, the sources said on Monday.

The consortium planned to buy a stake of between 30 and 40 percent in Bus Online for more than $100 million via a purchase of old and new shares to be issued by the company in private placements, said the sources.

“Disney wants to be a strategic partner not just a financial investor in Bus Online as Disney is going to do many things in China — for example, the theme park to be opened in Shanghai,” said one of the sources.

HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A consortium led by Walt Disney Co is in advanced talks to buy into China’s largest in-bus digital media and advertising company, a deal that could offer the U.S. entertainment giant a new platform to promote Mickey Mouse in China, three sources told Reuters.

Google Inc, the world’s No.1 Internet search company, which threatened to quit China last month over censorship and hacking concerns, was among investors in the Disney-led consortium, the sources said on Monday.

The consortium planned to buy a stake of between 30 and 40 percent in Bus Online for more than $100 million via a purchase of old and new shares to be issued by the company in private placements, said the sources.

“Disney wants to be a strategic partner not just a financial investor in Bus Online as Disney is going to do many things in China — for example, the theme park to be opened in Shanghai,” said one of the sources. “To Disney, the deal is not just about sharing in the growth of China’s advertising market but more about the promotion of Disney, the brand itself, and this is strategically important to Disney in China.”

HONG KONG/SHANGHAI, Feb 8 (Reuters) – A consortium led by Walt Disney Co <DIS.N> is in advanced talks to buy into China’s largest in-bus digital media and advertising company, a deal that could offer the U.S. entertainment giant a new platform to promote Mickey Mouse in China, three sources told Reuters.

Google Inc <GOOG.O>, the world’s No.1 Internet search company, which threatened to quit China last month over censorship and hacking concerns, was among investors in the Disney-led consortium, the sources said on Monday.

The consortium planned to buy a stake of between 30 and 40 percent in Bus Online for more than $100 million via a purchase of old and new shares to be issued by the company in private placements, said the sources.

“Disney wants to be a strategic partner not just a financial investor in Bus Online as Disney is going to do many things in China — for example, the theme park to be opened in Shanghai,” said one of the sources. “To Disney, the deal is not just about sharing in the growth of China’s advertising market but more about the promotion of Disney, the brand itself, and this is strategically important to Disney in China.”

SHANGHAI, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Teething problems with its new advertising system will dog Baidu Inc <BIDU.O> when it reports its quarterly results and guidance for early 2010, but China’s top search engine could gain in the longer term if Google <GOOG.O> follows through on its high-profile threat to quit China.

Long an investor darling of the China Internet world, Baidu, which will report fourth-quarter results on Feb. 9, shocked the Street in its last quarterly report by disclosing it was transiting faster-than-expected to a new advertising system.

Analysts expect the company to report a fourth-quarter profit of 37 percent to $1.67 per American depositary share, a slowdown from headier rates of earlier periods, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. But that growth rate should pick up to a brisker 84 percent in the first quarter as kinks get worked out, analysts estimated.

“For the near term, their revenue growth will be slower than usual, but in the long term it will be a positive catalyst for the company,” said CLSA analyst Elinor Leung.

SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) – They are cloaked by pseudonyms and multiple addresses, but China’s legions of hackers were thrust into the spotlight last week after Google said it suffered a sophisticated cyber-attack emanating from China.

There are tens of thousands of Hong Ke, or red visitors, as they are known in China. Many are motivated by patriotism, although it is more difficult to establish their relationship with the Chinese government or military, which some experts suspect as being behind the attacks.

The Honker Union, China’s most famous group of Hong Ke, shows the grey area between patriotic hackers and the state. The group has denied involvement in the Google attack.

“The Honker Union … has no interest in getting involved in politics. We work only for the security of Chinese websites,” one of its core members, Lyon, said in a telephone interview. Lyon, his hacker handle, is the head of a department in a major state-owned telecommunications firm and declined to disclose his real name.

SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Jan 20 (Reuters) – They are cloaked by pseudonyms and multiple addresses, but China’s legions of hackers were thrust into the spotlight last week after Google said it suffered a sophisticated cyber-attack emanating from China.

There are tens of thousands of Hong Ke, or red visitors, as they are known in China. Many are motivated by patriotism, although it is more difficult to establish their relationship with the Chinese government or military, which some experts suspect as being behind the attacks.

The Honker Union, China’s most famous group of Hong Ke, shows the grey area between patriotic hackers and the state. The group has denied involvement in the Google attack.

“The Honker Union … has no interest in getting involved in politics. We work only for the security of Chinese websites,” one of its core members, Lyon, said in a telephone interview. Lyon, his hacker handle, is the head of a department in a major state-owned telecommunications firm and declined to disclose his real name.

SHANGHAI, Jan 20 (Reuters) – In the autumn of 1998, computer science engineer Li Yanhong developed Rankdex, an experimental search engine that ranked websites according to their relevance to each other.

At around the same time, Google Inc’s <GOOG.O> Larry Page and Sergey Brin were tinkering with an algorithm that would make their search engine the largest in the world.

Li, known by his English name Robin, grew Rankdex into what would become the world’s third-largest search engine and China’s ‘Google-killer’ — Baidu Inc <BIDU.O>.

In an archetypal rags-to-riches tech story, 41-year-old Li started Baidu in a 3-star hotel room in Beijing. His search giant now dominates the world’s biggest Internet market, with more than 60 percent share by revenue and about 75 percent by traffic.

SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) – Google has postponed the launch of two mobile phones in China which use its Android platform, in the first sign its business in the country is starting to be affected by a dispute over hacking and censorship.

The manufacturers of the telephone, which was scheduled for launch in China on Wednesday, are Motorola and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, and China Unicom would have been the carrier, a Google spokeswoman said.

A source familiar with the situation said Google Inc wanted customers to have a “positive experience” with the product, but felt that would be difficult considering the publicity surrounding the company in China at present.

Google said last week that it and other companies were targets of sophisticated cyber-spying from China that also went after Chinese dissidents, and threatened to pull out of the country.