Facebook goes to China

Facebook will reportedly open a new social networking site in China in collaboration with Baidu, the most popular search engine there. The site will not be Facebook, that platform is much too open to be accepted by the oppressive government there. But it will presumably use some similar functionality and layer in plenty of government oversight and censorship capability. It’s interesting to contrast this with how Google has handled censorship in China, trying to hold the line against censorship while still trying to capture the enormous Chinese marketplace. Facebook just takes the restrictions and runs with them. This explains Mark Zuckerberg’s recent trip to China and meetings with Baidu.

Forbes wonders if the government will have questions about this arrangement.