Managing Director P. Ufkes of Baidu Europe allegedly doing this because of the difficulties his company has faced since they started promoting the Chinese search engine.

“The mounting popularity of the Asian Baidu, which has grown into the world’s third-biggest search engine; the launch of new services such as Baidu TV - the domain name baidu.tv is already owned by Baidu Europe - and the Chinese company’s activities related to the Olympic Games are making it very difficult to differentiate between the two companies,” said Ufkes.

The company will continue operations under a different name (which is yet to be announced), once their intellectual property is sold. Baidu Europe was established in 2003 and employs eight people.

People are speculating that its due to CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) banning Internet domain names that are based on gold medal winning athletes.

So what is the real reason? We will never know.

Last year, Reporters Without Borders covered a story about Godaddy withdrawing hosting for Chinese Human Rights sites.