How much does state competitiveness play into China's firewall policies? If you think of China's people as a customer base, and China as a large corporation, then it wouldn't surprise me that they would take any steps within their power to prevent other "large corporations" from taking away their customers.

With that in mind, Baidu becoming the default search engine in a Microsoft product is a huge win for Baidu and China as a whole. It's also that many steps closer to being the default search engine for a Microsoft product in different countries, such as the United States.