Obama in China: Long gone, and still headlinin'
Protest in Guangzhou: Why would you burn garbage?
Barbie Spa: For the cosmopolitan plastic beauty in you
Interview: Coco Zhao, from jazz to M. Butterfly
Week Around the Ists
That was the subject line of an email Shanghaiist reader Gerard just sent us in response to our Gmail comment in today's "Extra! Extra!" post. Here is what he had to say:
I just read a comment at shanghaiist.com about having difficulties to connect to Gmail… have you tried Google? Its not working either. The Great FireWall is blocking access to apparently all Google related websites (I can’t access google.cn, either). There is an interesting article at BoingBoing.
Minutes later, Gerard followed with this note:
Just an update regarding the blockade… -Not everybody has problems having access to Google/Gmail, it depends on the isp? Location?? -Gmail is still accessible through pop/smtp -Google can be reached by anonymous surfing websites like: www.anonymouse.org
Yes, it seems like they are screwing with us again. Thanks for the heads up, Gerard. Here is the current status at Shanghaiist headquarters:
- Google.com does not load without a proxy
- Google.cn loads
- Gmail does not load, but we can read our POP Gmail through our mail application
- Google News (news.google.com) loads and we can also view Google news feeds from our RSS reader just fine
- GTalk when used through an application like Adium works (there is no GTalk for the Mac)
How are things for you? We'll let you know if anything changes on our end.
UPDATE: As of 8:16 am Wednesday, here is the status at Shanghaiist headquarters:
- Google.com loads, quickly
- Gmail loads and seems to work
- Google News loads, but searches on it do not. Clicking on links on the front page of Google News results in an error message, but refreshing the page after the error message gives you the news story you clicked on. Google News links accessed through an RSS reader work.
- Google.cn loads
- On Google.com, some "bad" searches work -- like a "tiananmen square" image search turns up photos of tanks. But any search for FLG results in an error message, and, oddly, an image search for "tibet" resulted in an error.
- Shanghaiist.com still appears to load slowly due to Google Ads
- It's possible, likely even, that these are isolated occurrences that most PC users would blame on the fact that we use Safari on a Mac.
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Google is dead! So is gmail! I'm going insane!!!!
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!
Google and Gmail works for me at home but not in the office without anonymouse.
The 3 guys sitting around me can all access Google, and 1 other can't. I would assume that we were all on the same server.
Strange, could they be blocking individual mac addresses?
Looks like Google Ads may be slowing down the load times for Shanghaiist in China. Anyone else having problems?
I'm using windows2000 in the office Brad, so I don't think it's only a Mac user problem.None of the people in my office can use google.GRRRRRRRRRR
Things are working fine in Beijing - and I haven't yet heard from other provinces. Oddly, the FLG-linked heavily anti-CCP Epoch Times is unblocked in Beijing and (judging from traceroutes) seems unblocked in Shanghai. (http://english.epochtimes.com/index10.html). This would NOT be a deliberate unblocking, so I'm completely perplexed by what is going on (FLG hacking, great firewall malfunctions, someone at an ISP with a weird sense of humor).
gmail and gnews work fine for me. google uk seems to work just fine. as for google, i just replaced the google search box in firefox to google uk. searches seem to be the same if not very similar. simple as that.
Google ads not loading on my 2 sites in China
oh GODDDD
My gmail!!
my workkkkkkk
Im donne
bye, cruel world
arrgggggg
This started to happen for me since this morning. I am getting problem trying to access www.google.com and gmail.com but no problem with news.google.com. From DOS, ping www.google.com returned "Request timed out", but ping news.google.com returned successfully as expected. It's frustrating I cannot access my gmail! What's going on? Is there a workaround anyone knows out there? I am on WinXP Professional.
Thanks for any help in advance.
I have been using Tor tools for a while. Although it can be slow some time, it gets me to any site I want (so far at least). You can download it from http://tor.eff.org/. And if you're using Firefox, you can use it with a Privoxy tool, which makes using or not-using proxy just a click away. You can find the tool in Firefox add-on site.
My google toolbars are timing out. I can get through with a proxy.
why is this blockade so hit and miss? i'm glad i've still got access, but i feel like it's just a matter of time before i get caught in the trap too. anybody know if the situation is worsening?
Yesterday (in Shanghai) I could access Gmail via POP and Google Ads loaded, but that was it. This morning I can't access it via POP, but mail.google.com and news.google.com both load fine. Outbound links from Google News (that are first routed through Google to track clickthroughs, I suppose) don't work at all.
It's all back for me now. I get the feeling a lot of these problems are GFW-related, but more a thing of misconfiguration that gets worked out eventually.
This was also added to the post itself ...
UPDATE: As of 8:16 am Wednesday, here is the status at Shanghaiist headquarters:
Also, we ditched Google Ads on the site for the time being and pages load much more quickly for us now.
Here, Gmail does not work.
Google works, but extremely slow
Google News works, also searches.
I'm on a China Telecom ADSL in Shanghai.
Has anyone tried the Tor solution on a mac, as described in an earlier post?
I use Tor on my Mac from within China with Firefox and SwitchProxy. It works great. There is a Tor solution for Safari too, though I've not tried it. The EFF has instructions here: Tor Mac OS X Install Instructions.
Also, I did not witness any major blockage from here in Shandong of Google or Gmail over the last two days. However, I was briefly unable to access my Gmail over Pop via my mail application this morning, though I was able to access it via browser.
There may be something fishy happening, and there maay be a redirect - check the comment here. No details personally as I'm packing up a Beijing hotel room for a hell travel day tomorrow. And the other oddness, that two FLG sites are unblocked in the capital and elsewhere, is also very weird. (Epoch Times and ninecommentaries.com for the curious)
Next time this happens, which I'm sure will be soon enough, why don't you all just another search engine instead of messing around with proxies? Google isn't that good and sold out all its principles recently, as we all know, and is now left with egg on its face as it is still getting shafted by the CPP.