BEIJING – A Communist Party leader has told China's Internet companies to tighten control over material online as Beijing cracks down on dissent and tries to block the rise of Middle East-style protests.

The party secretary for Beijing, Liu Qi, issued the warning following a visit this week to Sina Corp., which operates a popular microblogging site, according to the party-published newspaper Beijing Daily.

Internet companies should "strengthen management and firmly prevent the spread of fake and harmful information," Liu was quoted as saying after the visit Monday to Sina. He said companies should "resist fake and negative information."

Communist authorities encourage Internet use for education and business but are uneasy about its potential to spread dissent, especially after social networking and other websites played a key role in protests that brought down governments in Egypt and Tunisia.

Beijing is in the midst of one of its most sweeping crackdowns on dissent in years and has detained or questioned hundreds of activists, lawyers and others.

The government tries to block access to foreign websites deemed subversive and Chinese operators of websites where the public can post comments are required to watch the material and remove any that violates censorship rules.

The government's censorship rules prompted Google Inc. to close its China search engine last year. Mainland users can see Google's Chinese-language search site in Hong Kong but access is slower and the company's China market share has shrunk.

The report on Liu's warning gave no details of how Internet companies were expected to change their management.

Employees who answered the phone at Sina referred questions to a spokeswoman who did not answer her phone.

With Liu during the visit were Sina CEO Charles Chao and Kai-fu Lee, a former boss of Google's China unit who runs a technology investment company, according to the Beijing Daily.

Chao told Forbes magazine in March that Sina's microblogging site, Weibo, has at least 100 employees monitoring content 24 hours a day. The company said in May that the number of Weibo users had passed 140 million.

Also this week, the Beijing Internet Media Association, a government-sanctioned industry group, called on its 104 member companies to police Internet content, possibly prompted by Liu's order.

"Propaganda guidance to the public should be led toward a correct direction," the appeal said, according to the Beijing Daily. "Online news should be trustworthy and should not spread rumors or vulgar contents."

Liu, the party secretary, also visited the headquarters of Youku.com Inc., a video portal, and talked with CEO Victor Koo, the report said.

China has the world's biggest online population, with 485 million Internet users as of June 30, according to the government-sanctioned China National Internet Information Center.

Meanwhile, a major Chinese Internet commerce platform, Taobao, has told merchants that use its service to stop selling virtual private network and other software that allows Web surfers to avoid government filters.

Taobao, part of Alibaba Group, said it acted after finding VPNs were being used to visit foreign websites illegally. A company spokesman said Tuesday it took the action on its own without receiving government orders.

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO |
Mon Aug 22, 2011 3:52pm EDT

NEW YORK – Tech heavyweights Microsoft and Google are acting like a couple of feuding starlets in a public online spat over — wait for it — patents.

It's not the first time Microsoft and Google have gone at each other's throats, nor is it likely the last.

But with Twitter and blog posts, the dispute is playing out in public in a way that wasn't possible in 2005, when lawsuits over an employee Google hired from Microsoft revealed the bitter rivalry between the two.

Now, Google is accusing Microsoft, Apple and others of launching a "hostile organized campaign" against its Android operating system, which runs smartphones that compete with iPhones, BlackBerrys and Windows-based mobile devices.

At issue are thousands of patents from Novell Inc., a maker of computer-networking software, and Nortel Networks, a Canadian telecom gear maker that is bankrupt and is selling itself off in pieces. Last month, a consortium that includes Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. prevailed over Google Inc. with a $4.5 billion cash bid for the Nortel patents.

Google lost out after a strange bidding process that included what published reports said was an offer for a billion times the mathematical constant "pi."

"Their response seems to be to whine about the process," technology analyst Rob Enderle said.

Enderle was referring to a scathing blog post by Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, who wrote on Wednesday that Microsoft was banding with others to acquire "bogus patents" to make sure Google can't get to them.

"They want to make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices," Drummond wrote. "Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation."

Not so fast, says Microsoft, which brought the feud to Twitter. There, Microsoft's communications chief, Frank Shaw, posted an image of an email from Google's general counsel, Kent Walker, declining to join Microsoft in the consortium to bid for the patents.

The email was sent to Microsoft's own general counsel, Brad Smith, who also chimed in. Smith wrote to his 2,000-plus Twitter followers that "Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no."

Shaw offered a reason in another Twitter post: "Why? BECAUSE they wanted to buy something that they could use to assert against someone else."

Enderle says it's no secret that Microsoft and Google don't like each other.

Microsoft has banded with another Google rival, Facebook, to include data from the online social network in Microsoft's search engine, Bing. Google can't do that because Facebook erected barriers preventing Google's search engine from indexing all the data on its network.

And earlier this year, Microsoft complained about Google to the European Commission in its first formal antitrust complaint against a rival. Microsoft accused Google of abusing its dominance of online search and advertising.

Then there was the 2005 incident, in which, according to court documents, Microsoft's boisterous CEO, Steve Ballmer, threw a chair and vowed to "kill" Google in an obscenity-laced tirade over the online search leader's hiring of Kai-Fu Lee. Lee helped develop Microsoft's MSN Internet search technology, including desktop search software rivaling Google's. He left the company that July after Google offered him a $10 million compensation package. He has since left Google, too.

So far, the patent feud has lacked obscenities, at least in public.

But the verbal tirade continued Thursday when Drummond updated his blog post to say that Microsoft is trying to divert attention from the real issue and push a "false `gotcha!'" instead.

"Microsoft's objective has been to keep from Google and Android device-makers any patents that might be used to defend against their attacks. A joint acquisition of the Novell patents that gave all parties a license would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners," he wrote.

Enderle says Google needs to grow up, and part of that process is that "they've got to get through the whining stage."

Google had the chance and refused to participate. Now, it is calling the process unfair, Enderle said, "which is something you can do as a little company but probably not when you yourself are a multinational."

Google did not immediately respond to a message for comment. Microsoft's Shaw didn't have a comment beyond what he tweeted.

SAN FRANCISCO – Google Inc.'s latest deal aims to help people find the best daily deals on the Web.

In its latest acquisition of talent and technology, Google has bought Dealmap. It's a 15-month-old startup that compiles discount offers from local merchants scattered in markets across the nation.

Financial terms of the acquisition announced Tuesday weren't disclosed. It's the latest in a flurry of acquisitions that Google has made to expand its Internet empire into promising new markets. Since the end of 2009, Google has spent more than $2.7 billion buying more than 70 companies.

In this case, Google is trying to become a bigger player in the rapidly growing specialty of distributing daily bargains from local merchants around the country. Groupon and LivingSocial have emerged as early leaders, but hundreds of competitors are now vying for a share. Google, as the owner of the Internet's most popular search engine and most lucrative ad network, looms as one of the most imposing entrants.

Google is adding Dealmap to its arsenal just a few weeks after starting its own daily deal service. Its version, called Offers, currently confines its bargains to New York, the San Francisco Bay area and Portland, Ore., but Google plans to add more cities. The company developed its service after Groupon turned down a $6 billion takeover offer last year.

"We've been thrilled with the early success of our commerce offerings, and we think (Dealmap) can help us build even better products and services for consumers and merchants," Google spokeswoman Katelin Todhunter-Gerberg said.

Groupon, which is based in Chicago, is now pursuing an initial public offering of stock that's expected to be completed in September or October. Although it's only three years old, Groupon already is on pace to generate more than $2 billion in annual revenue — a threshold Google didn't eclipse until its sixth year in business.

Both Groupon and LivingSocial have been aggressively expanding in an attempt to build on their early lead in the daily deal market. LivingSocial broadened its reach in Asia on Tuesday with its own acquisition of a South Korean deal site called TicketMonster.

Dealmap, which is based in Menlo Park, Calif., has built a database that lists deals from more than 450 different sources. It says it has more than 2 million users.