Google Documents and Groups Open in China!

Written by Julen Madariaga on February 2nd, 2010

Holy Smokes!

Something is moving in Google China.

I have been working for the last 12 hours with Google docs, and I just realize I was using Yi’s computer, the one that doesn’t have the VPN installed. This means that Google Documents is unblocked since yesterday evening at least. And so is Google Groups! Both sites were blocked by the Chinese GFW until recently.

Now I don’t know what to make of this. Is the GFW tinkering with the censorship algorithms as it prepares to include the whole of Google.com in the block and turn off the lights for ever? Or are the negotiations in Beijing going fine, like we were wishfully trying to guess this week from the mini-Youren updates?

For the moment my tests of Google.cn and Google.com show no difference from censorship as usual. More about this coming soon, plus a recap of the situation in advance of possible changes. Stay tuned.

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5 Comments » Posted in Internet and Media | Tags: Beijing, censorship, GFW, Google, test

Comments so far ↓

Feb
2
11:50
AM

Claude
Google Docs has always be accessible for me in Shanghai, even without VPN. What provider are you on?

[Reply to this comment]
Uln Reply:
February 2nd, 2010 at 12:08 pm
@Claude: Really? What kind of connection do you have? Are you sure you don’t go through a company proxy or something?

I’m China Telecom both at home and at work, different contracts, one is home one is big corporate. Both had Gdocs blocked.

I haven’t been using Docs intensively, but must have tried at least in 10 different occasions during 09 and it was always blocked. Plus evidence on the web, including Google help site, indicates that it has been blocked at least since early 2009 in China.

I have heard reports before that GFW is geographically patchy. Anyone else out there can share their experience?

[Reply to this comment]
Feb
4
2:15
AM

gunthers
OT, but you may find this interesting (frankly, I lack the technical knowledge to make a judgement…):

[...]at the end of October, Mozilla approved the addition of the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) as a root certification authority, meaning that Firefox will accept CNNIC-signed certificates as valid and fully trusted.
http://lwn.net/Articles/372264/

Discussion on the bug tracker:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476766

[Reply to this comment]
gunthers Reply:
February 4th, 2010 at 2:24 am
@gunthers,
for the conspiracy-crowd
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476766#c39

[Reply to this comment]
Feb
8
10:54
PM

Marketing China
That’s a really good news!!!
when will Picasaweb come back?

[Reply to this comment]