Yahoo yesterday formed a partnership with 12 Chinese companies to provide them with e-mail and other services.

The move appears to contradict the firm's previous statement that it would not enter the Internet portal market, and compete with NASDAQ-listed domestic rivals Sina, Sohu, and Netease. Yahoo China said yesterday that it had formed an e-mail alliance with Chinese firms like travel service company Ctrip, game websites including Haofang, e-commerce firm Dangdang, IT information portals Chinabyte, Enet and Donews, and software company Kingsoft.

The Chinese branch of the US Internet giant will first provide its free e-mail technology to the 12 companies and their users can register such accounts with a capacity of as much as one gigabyte.

Yahoo China spokesman Tu Jianlu said the 12 companies will not pay Yahoo China for e-mail services, but his company can easily win millions of high-quality Internet users, which will help Yahoo to develop online advertising and other forms of marketing.