China blocks Google over porn, again
Some Google websites, including the popular search engine, were blocked by Chinese authorities today as Beijing expressed unhappiness with Google serving up porn in its search results.
The issue has long been a contentious one between the company and the country. Google said last week that it would block pornography on its Google.cn site, but Chinese censors said porn was still accessible through Google.com.
The outage may have been short-lived as some reports on the Internet show that spotty access to the sites returned shortly after 8 a.m. Pacific time.
YouTube, the video-sharing site owned by Google, has been blocked in China since March. China also blocked Twitter and some other Internet services before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown this month.
TechCrunch reports that services affected today include Gmail, Google Apps, Google Reader, Google Books, Google Talk and Image Search.
According to the Associated Press, China has the world's largest population of Internet users, more than 298 million, as well as the world's most extensive system of Web monitoring and censorship.
-- Dan Fost
China blocked Google.com! unbelivable! We have staffs in China and all of our works are done through Google Apps. This could jeopardise lots of projects, employment there! This is really crazy!
Posted by: John | June 24, 2009 at 03:50 PM
I am in China and it is currently blocked. This includes gmail and is very frustrating. The real story has nothing to do with porn though, all about protectionism, the gao ye story for earlier this week, experimenting and typically foresight-free decision making here
Posted by: kevin | June 24, 2009 at 06:24 PM
Yes !they did it !AGAIN! since last 22:00 last night local time.
Now i have to use spotshield to check my gmail !
what should we do ? what can we do ! the government has totally out of its mind !
Posted by: Lauren | June 24, 2009 at 07:03 PM
I'm Chinese and I live in Shanghai.
The Government blocks more and more Internet websites in these years.
I believe most of the local websites are controlled by the Government in China, and they will never report the negative news about the P.R. Party.
Does anybody believe China's internet is open and has freedom?
(Editor's note: This post has been edited for spelling and grammar. The original submission is below:
I' m a chinese and liveing in shanghai.
The Govenment block more and more internet website in these years.
I believe most of local website controled by Govenment in China, they will never report the negetive news about P.R.Party.
Does anybody believe China internet is openly and freedom? )
Posted by: WEI | June 25, 2009 at 12:24 AM
I've had spotty access for about 48 hours. Comically, at one point when I couldn't access the search engine, I attempted to google "google blocked in china".
What I don't quite understand is why Google in particular has been targeted. The only real difference between it and, say, Yahoo, is that Yahoo applies Safe Search settings (which can be turned off) by default. I have to imagine that there is a lot more going on behind the scenes. The fact that Google.com sticks so religiously to its "search results uncontaminated by human efforts" while Yahoo has always organized results by hand may be part of it. But I surmise Yahoo, through its Chinese-American "Chief Yahoo" Jerry Yang, has always played nicer with China.
Posted by: Jeff G Deutsch | June 25, 2009 at 02:19 AM
I'm Chinese and i found now it is really hard for me to get access to the useful info by googling. while the government is sparing no effort in poping up its economy, themeasures to block the internet is very harmful for the improving of tis economy and techonolgy
Posted by: Tony | June 29, 2009 at 02:30 AM
Being a Chinese myself, I hate it when people say bad things about China, but I hate it more when Chinese government does such stupid things!
Posted by: Yu | July 29, 2009 at 06:30 AM