Google Services In China Disrupted

China and Google do not exactly have the best of relationships if history were to be of any indicator, and it seems that the upcoming 25th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations might have played a role in the latest Google service disruption in China. According to GreatFire.org, the government of China might actually have played a role in targeting the Google search engine and Gmail, alongside other services, rendering them inaccessible to many users in China since last week.

Apparently, the last time when such a block was monitored, it happened a couple of years ago, which is said to have lasted for approximately a dozen hours. The advocacy group shared, “It is not clear that the block is a temporary measure around the anniversary or a permanent block. But because the block has lasted for four days, it’s more likely that Google will be severely disrupted and barely usable from now on.”

Google has responded concerning such disruptions, touting that “We’ve checked extensively and there’s nothing wrong on our end.” Well, hopefully this is nothing but a minor blip and not one for the long run, and as to whether it has anything to do with the allegations that the Chinese government are the ones behind the service disruption remains to be seen, although the coincidence of the timing do lend some serious weight in such a line of thought.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: China, Google