China Malware War Gets Personal
‘Godfather of Chinese hooligan-ware’ fights back as Yahoo China launches an all-out assault.
Zhou Hongyi, controversial Internet entrepreneur and former president of Yahoo China, has filed a 3.6-million yuan ($450,000) defamation suit against his former employer in Beijing’s Second Intermediary People’s Court.
The suit, filed Thursday, came after Yahoo China general manager Tian Jian accused Mr. Zhou in a Monday press conference of unethical business practices.
Alibaba, the Hangzhou-based B2B e-commerce company that took control of Yahoo China in August 2005, announced that the company and its subsidiaries would “henceforth and for all time cease to make use of the services provided by companies invested in or related to Zhou Hongyi.”
A rift between Mr. Zhou and Yahoo China has been developing since before his departure from Yahoo last year, just prior to Alibaba’s takeover of Yahoo’s China operations. Mr. Zhou doled out generous bonuses to Yahoo employees in a ploy his detractors derided as a naked purchase of loyalties.
Mr. Zhou defended the disbursements. “Many of these people were longtime Yahoo employees, and they were under no obligation to follow me,” he said. “It was my money to do with as I wanted.”
The rift widened when Mr. Zhou, who nominally joined the venture capital firm IDG as a venture partner when he left Yahoo China, launched Qihoo.com, a blog and bulletin board aggregator and search engine early this year in Beijing.
He hired more than 100 former Yahoo workers as part of Qihoo’s 380 employees. Mr. Zhou said he didn’t poach any of them and that he abided strictly by the terms of his non-competition agreement.
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