Gator had changed its name to Claria, and raised some $40 million to launch a personalized homepage which never caught on. In the sneakiest move of all, it then raised $11.5 million under a new company name, JellyCloud, with the same set of executives as Claria — Scott Vandevelde and Scott Eagle among them. Was Jellycloud just Claria reborn? It's now a moot point, if our tipster's report is accurate. And a painful mistake for US Venture Partners, SoftBank, Sand Hill Capital and Crosslink Capital — who have managed to lose $11.5 million in just five months.

There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

Go check out the rest of Facebook's foreign knockoffs at Forbes.

No, the problem for Facebook is the appearance of a well-funded competitor in a market Facebook has yet to crack. Entering the China market is a key reason why Facebook took money from Hong Kong telecom mogul Li Ka-Shing. (Ironically, Accel Partners, an early backer of Facebook, also invested in Oak Pacific.)

It would be foolish for Facebook to go out and raise more money simply to match Xiaonei's bankroll; equally foolish to entertain thoughts of buying the company at such a high valuation. No, Facebook's only reasonable choice here is to redouble its efforts to expand into the Chinese market. Engineers who speak Mandarin but have been rebuffed on previous attempts to get into Facebook might find its recruiters more hospitable now.

In the U.S., 7/Eleven is one of many convenience-store chains. In Japan, it's an iconic retailing powerhouse — and it has owned 7-Eleven in the U.S. for 18 years.

Another model: The Seagate-Veritas deal. Seagate, a hard-drive maker, owned a large chunk of Veritas, a storage-software company it had spun off. In a $20 billion deal, Silver Lake took Seagate private, swapping out Seagate shares for Veritas shares. Similarly, Yahoo Japan could unlock its shares held by Yahoo by swapping them for a large equity stake. Complicated, but not inconceivable, especially if private equity injects some cash — and money managers might be keener on a direct stake in Yahoo Japan than in the U.S. operation.

The key to such a deal would be Softbank, which owns 41 percent of Yahoo Japan. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son has close ties to both Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who sits on the board of Yahoo Japan.

Softbank also owns 3.9 percent of Yahoo, but it also owns, as does Yahoo, a large stake in Alibaba, the operator of Yahoo China. Alibaba's management is reportedly restive about the prospect of Microsoft getting a say in their affairs. Softbank might throw its Alibaba stake into the combination, which would give Alibaba an exit in the public markets without the risk of an IPO, and the new Yahoo majority control of its Chinese websites.

Making the numbers work, especially when Microsoft could easily raise its bid, is a challenge. In some ways, selling out to Yahoo Japan would be as humbling to Yahoo's management as selling to Microsoft. But while Tokyo is more distant than Redmond, I suspect the cultures are more compatible.

The fundamental logic of Microsoft's bid is that it can do more with the Yahoo brand than Yahoo itself can. Many doubt Microsoft will actually manage that. Yahoo Japan has proven it can.