(**Update** - April Fool ;-) )Today in a stunning development, Linden Lab announced they had sold Second Life to China’s Baidu Corporation. In a brief printed statement released to the press, CEO Mark Kingdom stated the deal was reached after several weeks of secret negotiations.Baidu Inc. is a major communications company in China, owning the top search engine there. It made a profit of over $600 million in 2007. It made the news recently as the company most likely to profit from Google’s troubles with the Chinese government.On it’s blog, Mark Linden stated, “Letting Second Life go was not an easy decision. But Linden Labs has always prided itself on being on the forefront on the development of the technologies of virtual worlds. With Second Life becoming increasingly complex, we came to the conclusion we could not continue to both continue to be so and run our grand experiment. While we shall continue to improve Second Life, it will be through business deals with Baidu as new technologies become available.”Baidu also had a statement on the Linden blog, “We welcome Second Life into Baidu ... As we have helped bring the Internet to China, so we hope to guide the virtual residents into a righteous harmonious band. ... We should remind that our company operates under a set of rules that require reverence and respect to the wise and honored statesmen of our government. Those whom run about in virtual reality in their boxers using their words as fists with no regard for the respect of their betters are asked to cease such behavior so we will not need to take actions all will regret.”One of the Lindens supposedly stated that following the sale, Linden Lab will be cooperating with Facebook to make a sequel to the "Farmvile" game, but this is unconfirmed.Details are still coming in about what is clearly a turning point in Second Life.To go to the Linden blog post and comments, Click Here.
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