Facebook has received US$200 million from a Russian investment group in exchange for a small stake in the nation's largest social networking company.

Its new venture capitalist arm pledged to help find and develop "exceptional start-ups", offering early stage investments to a range of new firms. Areas it will look at include consumer Internet, software, clean tech, bio tech and healthcare. But it will also include "areas we haven't thought of yet."

The Centre for Democracy and Technology told the BBC: "China's actions fail to live up to international norms." The video sharing site has been off limits in China since Monday. Earlier in the week, the BBC reported from Beijing that China cut off access to the website because it carried a video showing soldiers beating monks and other Tibetans.

Even as the economy skids, Google keeps on rolling—just a little more slowly than it used to. Bucking the stalling economy and worsening outlook for online advertising, the search advertising titan on Jan. 22 reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results. The numbers suggest Google will keep grabbing more of the online ad market from traditional media and from struggling online rivals such as Yahoo! and Microsoft.