Google services halted in China – Communist Party Congress at fault?
It was all good and usual in China until reports of issues with Google services started flooding in. The reasons are still unknown, but it seems Google services have been halted in the faraway land. This includes Gmail, Google Maps and Google Docs, which are essential to many users.
What is even more interesting is that it happened right as the 18th Chinese Communist Party Congress takes place, which is when the country’s new leaders are elected. During this event, the Chinese Government holds the right to block any websites that don’t comply with their media regulations. The same regulations Google mentioned, in 2010, they would not comply to.
The problem is more than likely related to this, as Google has stated the following:
“We’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end” -Google
Meanwhile, Google searches are being re-routed to a Korean site by using DNS Poisoning. Google has seen a major drop in traffic in said country, so there is no doubt this is no accident.
It is sad to hear our Chinese friends are not able to enjoy these services at the moment. If you have ever experienced a server drop from Google, you would know a huge part of our internet use is affected. To some of us, it would become near impossible to continue with our daily tasks, and we might not even be able to easily continue our work.
We just have to wonder how this is working with mobile devices in China. Are Android’s native applications and Google services being affected on smartphones? If we have any readers from China, please do let us know. For now, let’s just wait and hope it all goes back to normal soon.
[via Business Week]