Exactly a week after Google left China, the world's most populated country seems to have hit back.
Google Search and a number of other Google services appear to be blocked from within China. The interesting point here is that they haven't blocked the entire site, but rather only a few services including Google Search. One of The Next Web's correspondent tried to search something but was unable to access any search results. The search resulted in an error message. This is what we are told:
“the page remains blank and I get a “Error 101 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET): Unknown error”
So apparently, Google.hk, Google News and Google Image search are not producing any search results, whereas Gmail and Google Maps are working perfectly fine.
Any reasons for such partiality among the features of the same site? Why not block all the services of Google?
The Next Web:
Wang Lijian, spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, one of China’s main Internet regulators, told the WSJ he was unaware of any disruption. Google’s China Service Availability page reports no issues with any of the above but it is unclear as to when it was last updated. A Google spokeswoman declined to immediately comment.
The company has however pointed out that the Chinese government could at any time opt to turn off Google’s services on mainland China by cutting links to the Hong Kong site. Until now, there has been no public indication that any of Google’s services have been disrupted there.
If this results in a complete and permanent blocking of Google’s search services, we’re likely to see backlash both from within and outside of China. It would raise fears that China is becoming more isolated with limited access to any news from outside of the country.
Of course, this like to come as more welcome news for Baidu who have have benefited enormously from the Google/China turmoil.
Credits: The Next Web
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