Just in time for the 18th Communist Party Congress, all Google services have suddenly been blocked in China. Traffic fell off Friday according to the Google Transparency Report.
“We’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end,” Google said in a statement. So what is wrong, then?
Search, Gmail and Maps are all blocked, and searches for Google services are being rerouted via DNS spoofing to another site located in Korea. This blackout kicked in at the outset of the Communist Party Congress, a major event that takes place every ten years at which the government’s new leadership is appointed through a secretive process.
While we don’t yet have comment from Chinese officials, the two possibile causes are government restrictions or a doozie of a job by hackers. Given the timing and the extent of the outage, an official intervention seems more likely. Either way, Google's response will be seen as a test of its character. How much is Google willing to put up with to do business in the Chinese market.
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