Bad timing. A day after Microsoft begins rolling out Bing, its new Google-killing search engine, the Chinese government blocks it - along with Hotmail, Twitter, YouTube and a swag of other sites.
China tends to get nervous in the lead-up to June 4, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989 when students took on the government in a show of defiance that was broadcast live around the world in one of the first big CNN moments.
The news must be particularly upsetting for Qi Lu, the workaholic Chinese-born guru behind Bing.
When government's - especially autocratic regimes - ban a website it can be seen as a badge of honour. Somehow, I don't think this was premeditated.
If they really wanted to make a statement, maybe they should have used a different background photo so that Bing.com would look something like this:
[Click on image for larger version]