Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Bing had signed a deal with Chinese search engine Baidu, which according to the article, controls 80 percent of the very large and lucrative Chinese market. 

The deal lets Baidu users access English language search using Bing, but it's not clear how much of an English language market Baidu has. What is clear is that Bing is trying to leap frog Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) in the Chinese market by leveraging this deal. Google has had issues with the Chinese government over censorship. Apparently Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) doesn't have a problem with this, though.

The LA Times reports that Microsoft has a better relationship with the Chinese government than Google, maybe because it's willing to kowtow to the government censors filtering out those results that the Chinese government finds undesirable for its people to see.

For all of its problems in China, Google is still in second place in search there. For its part Baidu apparently hopes to expand beyond the Chinese market, but given Google's worldwide hold on search, outside of China of course, it seems like a long shot at best that it can succeed where Microsoft has failed, even if they team up to try to make it happen.

Whatever happens, it seems Microsoft is willing to make a deal regardless of the political implications of doing so. Google showed some backbone in fighting Chinese sensors, and may end up paying a price if this deal works out.

For more information:
- see the Reuters article 
- see the LA Times article

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