Somehow I am not at all surprised reading that many of Google properties have been banned in China. Those include Google Apps, Gmail, Google Reader and the primary search engine itself. The reason? Well no obvious one and it appears more like a routine that China has followed over the past and many other services including Twitter, Facebook, Plurk to name just a few. While this ban has been lifted from a few of the services for now, many still remain under it. Can anyone give us the latest update on this?
Tag Archive: Ban
Is it so important to block a web service to keep people from sharing news or discussing current situation in your country? China is famed for doing so and Iran followed in yesterday by blocking FriendFeed. Was that to suppress people inside the country from sharing news there? Doesn’t sound quite valid when you have a countless other places where the same can be done and in an even better way. However the leadership in the region must have know how popular the service is in the region, rather people there are one of the most active users of the service.
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While everyone must be enjoying Apple throwing away iPhone’s for $99 or having you wait impatiently for the iPhone 3G-S to be available on June 19. China is taking a pretty a close fist approach to Web and Internet. China wants nothing short of total control over access to Web services and it had shown this earlier by blocking access to Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, Bing and the list just won’t stop. However the latest reports on various blogs state that China has ordered all PC manufacturers to sell each device with a software that blocks access to websites banned in the mainland. Authorities have however stated that it will be available in a CD and users can decide to install it or not. I am not buying that and even if they had that choice, if things to come to banning a URL, the government will do it. The software if installed will auto-update lists of banned websites, perhaps from a central server, meaning if you are in China running that software, you will be blocked from accessing the website banned in your country, perhaps instantly. And this is going to be effective from July 1, this year.
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Here comes another ban from China on Web services; Twitter, Blogger and Bing along with numerous other services have been banned. These bans aren’t something new as earlier the country had banned Plurk as well. I wonder why is it that the country has got such a harsh policy on web services that it keeps banning one or another at various times. Perhaps it considers itself to be responsible at safeguarding its population from external influence. Anyone with better reasons?
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