This is pretty interesting and you won’t see this ever happen here: Chinese portal Sohu is the official news provider and sponsor of the 2008 Olympics being held in the country...that means it gets unfettered access that the other competitors would have in the relatively-restricted media environment in the country. So the competitors Tencent, Sina and NetEase have teamed up for an Olympics reporting alliance. The three websites will combine media resources for the alliance, reports Pacific Epoch. Couldn’t find any more details, but would be interesting to figure out the business implications of this deal.

Updated: More sites have joined this alliance, and they include Tom Online, the big Chinese portal and mobile service, blog website Bokee, IT website Yesky.com, online community Mop.com, search provider Qihoo, onsumer financial information website Hexun, and finance website China Finance Online.