Chinese Users Left Out in the Cold

Chinese users were blocked from Google.com and many of its products on November 9th by the Chinese government during the 18th Party Congress of the Communist Party of China. The services they were without include:

• Gmail
• Google Drive
• Google Docs
• Google Analytics
• Google Maps

At the time, anyone trying to access a Google property was brought to a dead IP address and it was unknown whether the block would be permanent. Access was restored within about 12 hours. This move by China is expected to repeat itself as this is just one instance in a long history of problems between the second largest search engine in China and the Chinese government.