14 DAY TRIAL // China is quickly becoming the land of forbidden Internet services, and after the central government banned Windows 8 on state computers, a similar decision makes Google's Gmail unavailable to local users.
According to reports coming from China, Gmail no longer works for some users since last week, but this Monday, the mail service appears to be blocked completely for everyone in the country.
GreatFire.org, an organization that fights for the freedom of speech in China, says that the country might have banned Gmail with the Great Firewall of China, a tool that helps control local Internet connections by restricting access to a number of services.
This isn't the first time that Gmail becomes unavailable in China, as the service has actually experienced similar issues for several times throughout the year, but it now appears to be down entirely for everyone in China.
A GreatFire member told Reuters that China might actually try to push Google completely out of the country, in an attempt to promote domestic services instead of those coming from American companies.
“I think the government is just trying to further eliminate Google's presence in China and even weaken its market overseas. Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail,” he was quoted as saying.
Google: Everything working smoothly on our side
Mountain View-based search giant Google says that Gmail appears to be working alright on its servers, so no restriction has been imposed by the company, which means that the problem most likely takes place locally and could be caused by country firewalls.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying stated that she wasn't aware of any new ban on Google's services and reassured everyone of complete transparency in the relationship with foreign companies that are offering local users online solutions.
“China has consistently had a welcoming and supportive attitude towards foreign investors doing legitimate business here. We will, as always, provide an open, transparent and good environment for foreign companies in China,” she said.
There still are some ways to access Gmail in China and one of them is setting up the email service on smartphones and getting emails through IMAP or POP3, but some people claim that this trick is also failing to work properly on some devices.