As of this writing, numerous major American and European news outlets are reporting that Google is blocked in China, based on the information appearing on Google’s Mainland China service availability page.
However no journalist has actually confirmed with a human being at Google that this information is correct. What’s more, I’ve heard from several dozen people all over China who say that Google isn’t blocked for them when they access it on their Internet connections from Beijing to Shanghai to Sichuan to Hunan.
I have yet to hear from a single person who can’t access Google search in Mainland China. I am collecting people’s responses via Twitter here. Also see the #googlecn tag. For a sampling see here, here, here, here, and here.
The most insane part of this whole non-story is that Google’s stock fell 1.4 percent and Baidu’s stock rose 3.5 percent. What’s even funnier are all the financial analysts who commented to Reuters about the block…funny that is if you don’t own Google stock…
From RConversation
As of this writing, numerous major American and European news outlets are reporting that Google is blocked in China, based on the information appearing on Google’s Mainland China service availability page.
However no journalist has actually confirmed with a human being at Google that this information is correct. What’s more, I’ve heard from several dozen people all over China who say that Google isn’t blocked for them when they access it on their Internet connections from Beijing to Shanghai to Sichuan to Hunan.
I have yet to hear from a single person who can’t access Google search in Mainland China. I am collecting people’s responses via Twitter here. Also see the #googlecn tag. For a sampling see here, here, here, here, and here.
The most insane part of this whole non-story is that Google’s stock fell 1.4 percent and Baidu’s stock rose 3.5 percent. What’s even funnier are all the financial analysts who commented to Reuters about the block…funny that is if you don’t own Google stock…
Kudos to TNW and TechCrunch.
UPDATE: Mike Swift of the San Jose Mercury News has just posted this update on Twitter: “Google to Mercury News: Service Ok in China, and “it’s possible that our machines could overestimate” a “small” block of last night.”
UPDATE2: One person who e-mailed me from Beijing, who said it was OK to quote his e-mail but did not want to be named, just sent me the following:
“I can get google.co.uk, which I use regularly now, and the .com site seems to direct me to .com/hk. Search seems ok. Ive had times in recent few weeks when it didn’t work, and then did, but this morning seems pretty OK for me. however, my colleague sitting next to me, however, has had the google.com site do down a few times after searching for non-sensitive terms, and then seems ok a few minutes later.
UPDATE3: RWW has posted the following statement from Google:
“Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it’s possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally.
“Please also note that the dashboard is not a real time tool.”
http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2010/07/google-computer-reports-china-blockage-all-humans-report-otherwise.html