Connections to Google Inc.'s popular email service have been blocked in China amid efforts by the government to limit access to the company's services.
Records from Google's Transparency Report show online traffic from China to Gmail dropped to nearly zero on Saturday, although there was a tiny pickup on Monday.
Calls to the regulator, the China Internet Information Office, were unanswered Monday. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying did not confirm the block but said China welcomes foreign investors who legally conduct business in China.
Google closed its mainland China search engine in 2009, saying it would no longer cooperate with the country's censors. That followed hacking attacks traced to China aimed at stealing the company's operating code and breaking into email accounts.
Since then, access to Google services has been periodically limited or blocked, possibly in an effort to encourage Chinese users of Google products to shift to domestic companies willing to cooperate with the government.
Web access to Gmail has been blocked since June, according to Greatfire.org, a China-based advocacy group for Internet freedom, but users had been able to access the service through mobile apps or third-party email software such as Microsoft Outlook until the current block.
Taj Meadows, a spokesman for Google Asia Pacific, said Google has checked its email service and "there's nothing technically wrong on our end."
Google is blasted by UK watchdog for what it calls anti-competitive behavior through digital ads
Google was slammed Friday by U.K. regulators who say it's taking advantage of its dominance in digital advertising to thwart competition in Britain, ratcheting up pressure that the tech giant is facing on both sides of the Atlantic over its "ad tech" business practices.
Britain's Competition and Markets Authority said that the U.S. company gives preference to its own services to the detriment of online publishers and advertisers in Britain's 1.8 billion pound ($2.4 billion) digital ad market. The watchdog leveled its accusations after an investigation, and the findings could potentially lead to a fine worth billions of dollars or an order to change its behavior.
Google is a major player throughout the digital ad ecosystem, providing servers for publishers to manage ad space on their websites and apps, tools for advertisers and media agencies to buy display ads, and an exchange where both sides come together to buy and sell ads in real time at auctions.
"We've provisionally found that Google is using its market power to hinder competition when it comes to the ads people see on websites," the watchdog's interim executive director of enforcement, Juliette Enser, said in a press release.
The watchdog's charges, known as a statement of objections, arrive two years after it opened its investigation. Google's digital ad business is also the focus of a European Union antitrust investigation and a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit that's set to go to trial this month.
The CMA said that Google's "anti-competitive" conduct is ongoing, but the company disputed the allegations Friday.
"Google remains committed to creating value for our publisher and advertiser partners in this highly competitive sector," the company said in a prepared... Read More