Yahoo's Chinese partner issued a scathing criticism of the US technology company at the weekend, calling it “reckless” for publicly supporting Google's threat to quit the country in protest over a wave of Chinese cyberattacks.

Alibaba Group, in which Yahoo holds a 40 per cent stake, said it had “communicated to Yahoo that Yahoo's statement that it is ‘aligned' with the position Google took last week was reckless given the lack of facts in evidence. Alibaba doesn't share this view”.

Google's revelation that it was no longer willing to censor search results as required by the Chinese government has turned the spotlight on other western technology companies such as Yahoo and Microsoft that do business in the world's largest internet market by user numbers.