• Google Admits That China Is Blocking Its Mobile Services

    Date: 2010.03.30 | Category: Google in China

    Search engine giant Google has confirmed that its mobile service operations in China have been partially blocked by the government, after it defied its wishes of running a censored search service and shifted its core backend to Hong Kong.

    The company confirmed the disruption in its mobile services on its China status page which was set-up specially by the company in order to keep its users updated about the on-going struggle it had with the Chinese government.

    Reports confirmed that popular Google services like Maps, search and News were inaccessible from China Mobile’s GPRS connection, which is used by millions of Chinese mobile phone users. Other Google services include Google Groups, Docs and Picasa while YouTube and Blogger continue to be blocked by the country.

    A Google spokeswoman, commenting on the present state of affairs, said in a statement that “We can confirm that our status page indicates that mobile services are partially blocked from within mainland China.”

    Google’s move to defy the Chinese government had left Chinese users and government officials shocked as both parties condemned the company’s actions and with many referring to it as a “highly politicised decision”.

    The most popular web portal in Hong Kong, Tom Online, has announced that the company will discontinue from using Google’s search services while popular mobile services provider China Unicom has said that it will not include Google search in its mobile phones.

    Originally published on ITProPortal.com