YouTube Now Available In China. Or Not. Or Yes.

I must admit I used this title before, when YouTube was banned and then made available in Thailand, a country which blocked the video sharing service for publishing offensive clips for its authorities. This time it's China the one which restricted the access to YouTube, but as addict3d.org reported today, the ban was already removed. A few weeks ago, numerous Chinese users sustained they were unable to access the Google online video sharing technology so we all knew it was blocked by the country's ISPs. That was not the first time when the government took the decision to block a service, the Internet users getting used to the restrictions which occur every once in a while.

It appears that YouTube is not the single Google technology blocked in China because some other services such as Blogger are also unavailable to the local users. "Although attempts to reach Blogspot's homepage rerouted to Blogger.com's simplified Chinese homepage, neither Blogspot owner Google's official blog nor the infamous Chinabounder blog -- which features the sexual exploits and political rantings of a foreign English teacher in Shanghai -- could be reached. Blocked throughout the recent changes is the English-language site of Wikipedia," addict3d.org wrote.

Now let's go back in the history to the moment when the Thai authorities took the decision of blocking the entire YouTube. In case you missed the news, although I think it's pretty impossible if we think the entire case lasted approximately 5 months, Thailand removed the access to the video sharing technology due to some offensive clips published on its page.

At that time, Google's officials refused to remove the videos because they were not infringing the internal guidelines, a move which made the authorities almost impassible to YouTube's unavailability. It all got back to normal when YouTube removed some of the clips and agreed to work with the Thai government to avoid future problems.