Google has accused China of disrupting the Gmail service in China, after issues have plagued the Chinese users for weeks. After a thorough technical search of their systems, Google ruled out any technical issues and has openly accused the Chinese Government of blocking Gmail services for its Chinese users.
After an exhaustive investigation in response to complaints, Google ruled out any technical issues that would cause any hindrance to the use of any of its services in China. The company claimed that government obstruction, carefully designed to appear like technical issues, was to be blamed for the interference in key features in Google’s email service. Many basic email functions including sending messages, marking read and unread messages and even instant messaging service Gtalk within Gmail, all appear to ‘malfunction’ for users in China.
According to an article just published by the BBC, Google released in a statement regarding the complaints: “a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail“.
Many believe that the Chinese government is trying to control any anti-government elements or campaigns callings for protests through the internet. It might not come as a surprise, as the Chinese government has always been known to monitor and filter internet content, including blocking various websites and interference with services. Though Beijing has always officially denied any such involvement, cyber attacks and monitoring in China seem to be a constant in daily lives there.
Only last year in January, there was a very public incident between Google and the Chinese Government, with Google threatening to pull out of China completely as its results were being filtered by the government. Since then, Google’s relationship with China has been rocky and problems surfaced against last month, when Google reported:
“We’ve noticed some highly targeted and apparently politically motivated attacks against our users. We believe activists may have been a specific target.”
Hopefully, Google will be able to manage these challenges faced by its users and ensure uninterrupted use of its services globally without any further security concerns.
