Google services blocked by Chinese government

Alas, Google has been stuffed behind China’s Great Firewall once again as the country prepares for the election of its new leader, Xi Jinping. Anyone who tries to access Google, Gmail, Maps, or many other of the company’s services will find themselves with a whole lot of nothing. In addition, overall Internet speeds were low throughout the country.

So far, it has been reported that Google.com, Google.com.hk, mail.google.com, drive.google.com, play.google.com, docs.google.com, and maps.google.com are all inaccessible. Other subdomains may be blocked as well. All lookups lead to the IP 59.24.3.173, which doesn’t belong to a website. Obviously, users can’t access any Google service, including Search, without the aid of a VPN or similar bypass.

Google checked out the issue, and reported via a spokesperson to El Reg that “we’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end.” The company’s transparency report shows a sudden drop in traffic that started at midnight. Presumably, this comes as a move to stop protests and other disturbances in light of the 18th Congress Party.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Google has been blocked by the Great Firewall; we reported back in April, for example, that the country had blocked Google Drive. If you want to check it out for yourself, head over to GreatFireWallofChina.org and plug in some Google domains. Thus far, every one that’s been tested returns the message, “No servers were able to reach your site. This means that your site is most likely NOT accessible from within mainland China.”

[via The Register]