Leading Chinese portals sina.com, Netease (163.com), and qq.com announced yesterday a joint "Olympic Coverage Alliance," with the aim of providing more elaborate and timely Internet coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Chen Tong (C) editor in chief with sina.com, Netease's chief operation officer Dong Ruibao(L),and General Manager Sun Huaizhong with qq.com attend the joint news conference held in Beijing July 19, 2007.[sina.com]

"It is the first daring attempt to integrate Chinese network resources and forge an interactive platform to spread abroad Olympic spirit," said a joint announcement released later.

The announcement said the three companies will create multi-dimensional coverage of the Games through high-tech offerings like news round-up, blogs, online community resources, e-mail, and information services.

The newly-established alliance, however, was strongly criticized by big rival Internet company sohu.com, also the Olympic official sponsor, which claims the Olympic Alliance doesn't have any authorization to report on the field.

"I wouldn't like to judge any an individual or his company in public, but it is not true that what the company you mentioned said that it owns a so-called 'preferential treatment' in news coverage by then," Chen Tong, editor in chief of sina.com told media.

"That website is none other than an Olympic sponsor who was required to construct and maintain the Beijing Olympic Committee (BOCOG) official website," Chen said. "So far, there hasn't been any Chinese website media company that's gotten a news report certificate for the Games."

Chen added that the site tom.com may join the alliance in the near future, and welcomed the participation of other online media outlets.

Early this month, BOCOG media service chief Sun Weijia clarified there will be most likely new media, or online media companies reporting on the Beijing Games, but he also stressed that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has the final word, and may allocate small quotas to new media outlets based on their capacity and international status.

The Alexa Company of defining the website ranking measurement has listed the three websites in the alliance among the top 20 portals websites in the world. They've grasped considerable profits and market share.

Nielsen/Netratings, a global company measuring online audiences, said when the Olympic Games have been in session, more than 90 percent of Chinese netizens have turned to the web as their primary resource for information, with weekly online times as high 15 hours, more than total period of time spent on telecasts and paper media.