Baidu.com has agreed to provide search listings for Microsoft's Chinese Web properties and is reportedly mulling several video deals with local online video providers in China. It's strange to see Baidu partner with Microsoft after rival Google was one of the primary investors in the Chinese search giant. Google has since sold its stake in Baidu, citing its own Web search ambitions in China, but--as ever--a rivalry in one area doesn't prevent Google from trying to forge a mutually beneficial partnership in another. Could Google and Baidu--China's top two search engines--become online video partners? According to …

How do videos end up on YouTube's home page? Sometimes movie marketers can buy home page placements for their trailers, but it's been a mystery how YouTube decides what deserves front-page treatment. Mark Glaser of PBS.org writes of a struggling stand-up comic whose work appeared on the home page one day. As a result, his video shot up to 750,000 views, and he got hundreds of new subscribers to his YouTube channel. Did he contacted YouTube or paid for his slot? No, and neither did other front-page successes. Jennifer Nielsen, a marketing manager at YouTube, says that Featured …

China is increasingly looking anti-Web 2.0, which bodes poorly for the likes of MySpace, with its hopes of opening in China sometime next year. On Tuesday, the government said it's tightening controls over the online music and game industries, demanding that distributors report imported products directly to censors for approval. The move, officially meant to encourage a "civilized and healthy" Internet, comes amid greater efforts to control media in general. The Culture Ministry, which posted the note on its Web site, says it's partly trying to protect Chinese companies from losing market share to foreign rivals. Sure. …

A new company is hoping to turn the tide on spammers and unwanted marketers by making any senders who don't appear on an approved list pay for your time. San Francisco-based Boxbe has its email users create their own approved senders list, allowing them to send email for free, but anyone else will have to pay a price you designate. It could be as low as 3 cents or as high as $99. Boxbe will give 75% of the funds collected from advertisers that actually pay to users. As much as we hate spam, relying on users to …

Apple Computer yesterday denied claims by Forrester Research that revenue from its iTunes Music Store is slowing. The research firm did an analysis of more 2,700 U.S. iTunes debit and credit-card transactions between April 2004 and June 2006, saying U.S. revenue fell 65% during the first six months of 2006. "The conclusion that iTunes sales are slowing is simply incorrect," an Apple representative said, adding that 1.5 billion songs have been purchased from iTunes, making it the fourth-largest music retailer in the U.S., with 6% of the country's total music sales. Silicon.com reports that Apple …

Yahoo is restructuring, but so far, investors aren't buying it, as it's stock hasn't lifted much since the news. What does it do for Yahoo? Is being spread thin a bad thing if you've got more eyeballs than just about anyone else on the Internet? Would less traffic be better? Clearly, monetization is the problem. Yahoo could also use greater search share, but to gain that, it will have to create a better search engine. Case in point: most Yahoo users currently leave the site to do their searches on Google. If Google provides the best leads and …

Ahead of the Mix Conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft, a new player in the market currently dominated by Apple, convened a group of bloggers. Gates was asked about the long-term viability of DRM. He said the rise of illegal or quasi-legal options like AllofMP3 and BitTorrent ensure that users have options when it comes to DRM. Gates didn't say what he thinks could replace it, but he did seem to agree that closed music isn't an attractive options for consumers who could just as easily steal music. He said that no one is satisfied with the …

For the past few years, Facebook, the social network for students, has enjoyed surging traffic among a coveted user base, making it one of the most sought after Web properties for big media corporations today. Started by former Harvard student Michael Zuckerberg, Facebook grew from a $10 million valuation by Friendster in 2004, to a $1 billion acquisition attempt by Web giant Yahoo earlier this year, which Zuckerberg and the company's board roundly rejected. TechCrunch received leak documents that tell the whole story. Yahoo initially offered $37.5 million for 5% of the company at the beginning of …

Startup Wikia is creating a new open source initiative that would create a completely wiki-based media company. Called Open Serving, the new project will give authors free, managed hosting space with the aim of building communities around particular topics of interest. It will also provide a free collaborative news blog, customer support and let them keep revenue from ad sales. Gil Penchina, the new company's CEO, said he had no idea how Open Serving would make money. But by creating a new platform based on open source code for a generation of publishers, Penchina hopes to create the …

Due to a worse-than-expected supply problem, Sony sold less than half the PlayStation 3 units it projected in its first month of U.S. sales, according to NPD Group. The research group says Sony sold 197,000 units in its first month, when it expected to surpass $400,000. Conversely, the Nintendo Wii outsold the PS3 by more than 2-1 during the same time period, selling 476,000 total units in November. Understandably, Nintendo is gloating about this, although Sony has struggled to manufacture the more powerful and more expensive PS3. Software sales have been somewhat weaker than video-game publishers expected. …