GOOGLE SAYS CHINA BLOCKING GMAIL

Google and China have a long history of conflict stemming from the work of Chinese hackers to gain access to the inboxes of thousands of Gmail-using political dissidents… a conflict which finally resulted in Google pulling itself from the country.

Now the search giant is accusing the Chinese government of hacking Gmail and disrupting service to the popular webmail provider because of fears of a “jasmine revolution,” or an uprising of the oppressed similar to that which has happened over the course of the last month in Middle Eastern countries like Libya, Egypt, etc.

China’s interference with Google makes it appear as if Google’s services are having technical problems, even when they’re not. Users and advertisers within China have complained about numerous technical issues plaguing Gmail within the country, including difficulty sending messages, marking messages as read, and so on.

Google says there is no problem with the service on their end. In fact, they explicitly say it’s because China is blocking Gmail, but trying to make it look like they’re not involved.

“Relating to Google there is no issue on our side. We have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail,” said a Google spokesperson.

This is just another in a long line of moves on the part of the Chinese government to suppress the Internet’s ability to coordinate political dissident. Consequently, China has been doing everything possible to lock Western companies like Google out of the country, even having gone so far as to launch their own search engine, Panguso, through the state run China Mobila telecom.