Only Cuba for now

Oct 1, 2007 13:16 GMT  ·  By

Numerous users are now reporting that Google banned Cuba from accessing most of its solutions but there is no official reason for this. However, Google Earth, AdSense, AdWords, Code Search, Desktop and Google Sky are all unavailable for the Cuban users. The Cuban Daily News reports that every time a consumer tries to access one of the technologies mentioned above, the Mountain View company displays a message saying that "We're sorry, but this service is not available for your country". Until now, all the products worked just fine and no error message was displayed while accessing the official page of any of them.

As I said, the super giant didn't say a thing about the restriction so let's try to find out why Google took the decision to block Cuba. The Cuban Daily News sustains one of the reasons might be applied on the subscription-based technologies which require the users to pay for them. "Some of these restrictions, such as not being able to download programs that require payment, can be easily explained by US blockade laws against Cuba, which prevent most commercial transactions with the island. However, these laws directed against Cuba can be applied in third countries, like Spain and Argentina."

Everybody, including me, is pretty curios to find out the reason for the blocking since the Cuban authorities even helped the Mountain View company create a local version of Google, as the same source reports.

However, this is not the first time when Google becomes unavailable in a whole country and rumors are talking about all kinds of reasons. In the past, Google encountered problems in several nations and it all proved to be only some server glitches which caused the unavailability but the search giant moved fast enough to repair them. Now, let's wait a while and see if the Mountain View firm really blocks Cuba because an official statement must be released soon in order to clarify the matter.