2014 China censorship of Google services
2014 China censorship of Google services is the event that Google services are disrupted by the GFW, which causes users from mainland China are not able to use Google services normally. Since May 2014, the users from mainland China found that Google search engine and some other Google services (e.g. Google Play, Gmail, Google Docs, etc.) are not able to be visited, and even Google accounts are not able to be logged in. However, this event is different from the Google blocking events in 2009-2013, because the blocking event didn't stop after 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
Reason
Chinese authority has no public response for this event, but some media guess that it is caused by the policy modification of the GFW as the coming 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The primary method is IP blocking. The 443 port of most of the Google servers is blocked in mainland China.
Here's a report from the Reuters: GreatFire.org, a group that charts Internet censorship in China, says that China's government seems to try blocking Google search engine and the Gmail service. Google internal report also shows that the traffic flow from mainland China started decreasing since Friday.
Influence
Google users in mainland China are influenced by this event, and Android users are not able to use Google Play. Google's cloud platform for developers Google App Engine is also seriously interfered.
Measures
Because of the anycast technology used by Google, users may map the domain name on to unblocked IP addresses via modifying hosts, and therefore the Google services can be obtained. Up to present, all the Google IP addresses are blocked in mainland China.
Subsequent Events
On July 1, Financial Times in the United Kingdom said that blocking Google greatly impacted the Chinese businesses.
On the evening of July 10, Google got unblocked in mainland China. Meanwhile, the encrypted version of Facebook and YouTube could be viewed normally, this caused a major reaction from the Internet users, but it was blocked again on the next morning.
Ever since this censorship, Google and some other services could be viewed normally sometimes, but it usually got blocked again soon. This might be related to some defects of the GFW Fire Wall, and not that it got unblocked.
Reason
Chinese authority has no public response for this event, but some media guess that it is caused by the policy modification of the GFW as the coming 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The primary method is IP blocking. The 443 port of most of the Google servers is blocked in mainland China.
Here's a report from the Reuters: GreatFire.org, a group that charts Internet censorship in China, says that China's government seems to try blocking Google search engine and the Gmail service. Google internal report also shows that the traffic flow from mainland China started decreasing since Friday.
Influence
Google users in mainland China are influenced by this event, and Android users are not able to use Google Play. Google's cloud platform for developers Google App Engine is also seriously interfered.
Measures
Because of the anycast technology used by Google, users may map the domain name on to unblocked IP addresses via modifying hosts, and therefore the Google services can be obtained. Up to present, all the Google IP addresses are blocked in mainland China.
Subsequent Events
On July 1, Financial Times in the United Kingdom said that blocking Google greatly impacted the Chinese businesses.
On the evening of July 10, Google got unblocked in mainland China. Meanwhile, the encrypted version of Facebook and YouTube could be viewed normally, this caused a major reaction from the Internet users, but it was blocked again on the next morning.
Ever since this censorship, Google and some other services could be viewed normally sometimes, but it usually got blocked again soon. This might be related to some defects of the GFW Fire Wall, and not that it got unblocked.
Comments