China: Mobile Google services partially blocked
The Chinese government is flexing its muscles in its dispute with the internet company Google. Since Sunday, mobile services in China have been partially blocked.
Google announced this on a specially set up status page. However, web searches for texts, images or news are still running, but their results are filtered by the authorities. The Chinese also still have access to their email accounts at Gmail.
Google announced at the beginning of the year that it wanted to end the state-imposed censorship of its Chinese search engine. The government in Beijing had repeatedly made it clear that it would not tolerate Google's actions. For a week now, Google has been redirecting search queries from China to its uncensored search engine in Hong Kong. Although the Chinese can see hits on critical content in the Hong Kong version, the websites themselves are still blocked.
For example, Google's video portal YouTube does not work in China, nor does the Blogger service. The shutdown of mobile services had been expected. Cell phone manufacturer Motorola recently announced that it would be equipping its new smartphones for the Chinese market with Microsoft's Bing search engine.
Google announced at the beginning of the year that it wanted to end the state-imposed censorship of its Chinese search engine. The government in Beijing had repeatedly made it clear that it would not tolerate Google's actions. For a week now, Google has been redirecting search queries from China to its uncensored search engine in Hong Kong. Although the Chinese can see hits on critical content in the Hong Kong version, the websites themselves are still blocked.
For example, Google's video portal YouTube does not work in China, nor does the Blogger service. The shutdown of mobile services had been expected. Cell phone manufacturer Motorola recently announced that it would be equipping its new smartphones for the Chinese market with Microsoft's Bing search engine.
