Fire on the Baidu

4:00 PM -- If you're looking for some moderate excitement on Friday, Baidu.com, the Chinese Internet portal (or the "Chinese Google" as some folks are lazily labeling it), went public today.

Last I checked it was up a mere 108 points, or 400% from its offering price. Though that seems to be fluctuating +/- 30 points every 10 minutes (see BIDU).

Personally, I don't get it. I mean, I can't even read the thing.

And let me get this straight: We don't want to sell the Chinese our oil companies, but we'll give them back 4x their money on an Internet IPO?

— R. Scott Raynovich, US Editor, Light Reading