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Gmail Access Starts To Come Back In China, State-Run Paper Blames Google

Posted by timothy on from the organized-crime-with-jails-and-guns dept.

An anonymous reader writes Basic access to Gmail is starting to come back online in China on Tuesday after going down on Friday. The state-run Global Times China did not explain what caused the four-day outage, despite the fact that the government clearly implemented the block, and instead pointed to Google's unwillingness to obey Chinese law. All of Google's products have been severely disrupted in China since June. While users in Chinaare not able to access Gmail via the website, email protocols such as IMAP, SMTP, and POP3 had been accessible. The Great Firewall of China started blocking the IP addresses used by Gmail for these protocols, leaving users in China with no way of sending or receiving emails.

3 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. So why'd it come back online? by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If Google was blocked for not obeying Chinese law, but isn't blocked anymore... then what principles did Google compromise in order to get unblocked?

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    1. Re:So why'd it come back online? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I live in China. This is an ongoing attack on Google. It is not just email - Google fonts are blocked too. The poster is right about degraded services.

      With the possible xception of Wechat, ther is no Chinese internet service that would have survived without the government blocking outside entities such as Twitter, Facebook etc.

  2. If a tree falls in a forest... by DarthVain · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is likely China trying to exert its muscle to support Baidu the dominate search engine in China. China and Google have already butted heads about censorship in the past and Google withdrew services from China as a result.

    However the actions here go beyond the borders of China, in that it influences international trade, in that if I can't use Gmail to contact my clients in China, I would be forced to use something different.

    I would suspect that Google as a result highlighted this very fact to several jurisdictions heavily involved with trade with China, including the US, who no doubt sent very carefully worded messages to the Chinese government regarding what they thought of this trade influencing practice and how it relates to current treaties. To which I am sure China said, "Whoops!", blamed it on Google not meeting their laws, and promptly flipped the switch to turn it back on.

    What did this all accomplish? Not much. However China made it pretty clear that it has the capability to flip a switch and totally cut off someone from their market if they so choose... Which is a pretty nice stick to wave about belligerently.