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Google China has made a move.  Or it will, anyway - early reports are a little unclear as to the timetable.  In any event, there is word concerning the acquisition of at least one company and investments in as many as another five.

The word(s) came from Kai-Fu Lee, president of Google China; everyone can agree on that.  And no one has details as to what companies Google has taken a shine; Fu Chenghao of the Shanghai Daily reports, “Lee declined to name any of them, saying they are in the fields of search, entertainment, the online community and others.”

The only problem, then, is the matter of chronology.  Chenghao states that Google “has invested in another four to five Chinese Internet firms,” and an article in China Knowledge uses the same phrasing.  Sumner Lemon, the IDG News Service’s Beijing correspondent, has seen a different calendar, however.

“Google reportedly plans to acquire one or two Chinese companies and invest in up to five more over the next year as part of efforts to gain ground on rival Baidu.com in China,” writes Lemon.  Past tense, future tense, I dunno.  All three sources have been reliable before.

But there’s one more piece of information that has come out of the confusion: according to the Shanghai Daily, “Lee said there’s no ‘upper limit’ for recruitment for the Shanghai facility, which joins two other Chinese research centers in Beijing and Taipei.”  So Google China is either out of the loop in regards to Google’s hiring issues, or the branch is operating under different financial restraints.