Baidu's face to Facebook talks ignore chime of wedding bells

The country's top search engine Baidu is running around like a firefighter attempting to dampen speculation after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg lit the flame and toured its campus in Beijing on Monday.

The 26-year-old billionaire met with 42-year-old CEO Robin Li and they had lunch in the company canteen. The flies on the wall started buzzing, and some camera phone photos taken by a Baidu employee were quickly posted and winged their way around the world, causing embarrassment at company headquarters.

The $64,000 question (though it's worth a lot more than that) is what the two Internet giants talked about. First off, this isn't the pair's first meeting. Their initial hookup was in 2009, and they met again in July this year. So, while this is Zuckerberg's first visit to China, it's not his first attempt to get traction in the local market.