Google services blocked in China except for Gmail

WASHINGTON: Google's services in China were fully or partially blocked on Thursday with the exception of its email service, Gmail.

A Web page maintained by Google on the accessibility to its products in mainland China listed Web search and Google Ads and Google Mobile as "fully blocked" for the first time in weeks.

Other services which normally are fully or mostly accessible such as Google Images and Google News were listed as "partially blocked" on the dashboard page at google.com/prc/report.html.

Gmail was the only Google service which was listed as "fully or mostly accessible" on Thursday.

There was no immediate explanation for the change in status of Google services in China.

China said last week it had renewed Google's license to operate in the country after the Internet giant agreed to respect Chinese censorship laws.

Google, however, denies that it is censoring its products in China.

In January, Google said it would no longer censor search results in China and threatened to completely shut down its operations there over what it said were China-based cyberattacks.

In March, Google said it would no longer bow to government censors and effectively shut down its Chinese search engine, automatically re-routing mainland users to its uncensored site in Hong Kong.



In late June, Google said it would stop re-routing and instead set up a new landing page at google.cn with links to the Hong Kong site.

Google.com.hk is intermittently accessible from mainland China but searches for material typically viewed as sensitive by Chinese authorities often return an error message.