Microsoft to Partner With China’s Leading Search Engine

NY Times: Microsoft has signed a deal to power English-language searches on Baidu, China’s top search engine. “More and more people here are searching for English terms,” said Baidu’s Kaiser Kuo. “But Baidu hasn’t done a good job. So here’s a way for us to do it.”

Observers say that Microsoft will almost certainly be required to censor search results in order to operate in the country. According to a company spokesperson, “Microsoft respects and follows laws and regulations in every country where we run business. We operate in China in a manner that both respects local authority and culture and makes clear that we have differences of opinion with official content management policies.”