China Blocks Google Search, Gmail, Google+, Maps & More

TheNextWeb reports China has decided to block Google services. Currently, Google search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Google Drive, and other Google products are currently not working when trying to access them within China. TheNextWeb received confirmation from Google that China is indeed blocking their services. This is happening during the 18th Party […]

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China Google+TheNextWeb reports China has decided to block Google services.

Currently, Google search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Google Drive, and other Google products are currently not working when trying to access them within China. TheNextWeb received confirmation from Google that China is indeed blocking their services.

This is happening during the 18th Party Congress of the Communist Party of China. It is unclear if the block is temporary for the 18th Party Congress or if this is something that is more long term.

GreatFire.org has more details on the block, showing that this was the first time China blocked Google services since February last year. Anyone trying to access those Google services is being pointed to a dead IP address 59.24.3.173. But you can access country specific Google services, such as google.co.uk.

GreatFire.org also provides a full list of Google sites being blocked right now.

As we reported this week, Google is #4 in marketshare in China with only 4.72% share. How much this is impacting Google is unknown, how much this is impacting Chinese users of Google is large.

Postscript: About twelve hours after China blocked Google services, the services came back up. The Internet traffic resumed to Google a little after 6 a.m. local time.

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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