Despite being blocked, Google+ still has the power to ruffle feathers here in China as news outlets have been abuzz recently concerning Google's deletion of thousands of Google+ accounts that were not using real names. As interesting as that may be, the real story here lies not in why "JrzyShoreGrrll1993" or "sher@mie:)" should keep their profiles, but rather in the numerous internet activists who have a much less stupid reason to use a pseudonym. more ›

How appropriate that Ai Weiwei should choose to end his social media silence by joining the hottest new thing to be blocked on the Chinese internet: Google Plus. He posted his first message yesterday, saying "来了，问候" ("Greetings, I'm here") and has since been added/friended/fanned/whatever-ed by over 7000 people. more ›

Baidu.com, China’s search engine Goliath, has combined forces with three major American record companies to develop what is hoped to be a breakthrough against music piracy in the People’s Republic. more ›

Or so our most recent efforts have revealed (on multiple browsers, on multiple computers, just to be sure.) When entering plus.google.com, instead of getting the uphill January molasses-on-a-snail Gmail speed, now it's just the immediate and dreaded but polite suggestion that maybe we should reexamine our web connection, site address, or logic in moving to China. In other words, it's straight-up blocked. Clever move, China. After media had a field day mis-reporting the blockage last week, I wonder who's willing to swallow their pride and give the same headline another try? I can see it now: "Google+ blocked in China! ...no really guys, this time it is!" more ›

The Washington Post is reporting that Google's shiny new attempt at an answer to Facebook, Google+ (in "field trials" right now, probably just to make it sound cooler as it remains "invite only") has already been blocked in China! more ›

Looking to have your internet regulated even more by the government? No problem because People’s Daily, the highly controlled state run newspaper, just announced the launch of its new online search engine “Jike”. more ›

If anyone is keeping count, go on and add another tally under "mishaps between Google and China." Google officials announced today that hundreds of Gmail accounts were recently hijacked by hackers, primarily victimizing U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in other Asian countries, military personnel, journalists and others. more ›

According to tests done by www.greatfirewall.biz, the download speed of Gmail in China has plummeted to an average of 34 kbps. That's 45 times slower than QQ's speed of 1514 kbps. Or if you'd like your fractions another way, Gmail is now operating at 2.2% the speed of QQ. For most of you, this will just be confirming what we've all been experiencing for weeks now. more ›

Gmail has denied any faults within their own system after their services in China have been constantly disrupted for weeks now. We've heard rumors that the strategy is to slow down or even block Gmail every 15 minutes, in order to convince users that it's a problem with Google, not the firewall. Sure, you all say, we aren't dummies, we know what's happening. Okay, but can somebody please tell that to Google's shrinking share in the Chinese market, and somehow convince them, yet again, not to move their business elsewhere? more ›

Former president of Google China, Kaifu Lee, tweets: "Top-class people hire top-class people. Second-class people hire third-class people. So as soon as you see second-class people entering your company, you know it's downhill from there. (The logic behind the two earlier sentences: Only top-class people have the self-confidence to bring in other top-class people, everyone else shies away from doing that.)" more ›

A week or so ago, a fun little infographic about America, called the United States of Autocomplete, popped up. The theme was inputting each State into Google and seeing what the autocomplete came up with. I was curious what would happen with China, so I put each province into search to see what they'd bring up. more ›

When Wikileaks first broke, one of the juiciest pieces of China gossip was about the Google fiasco from earlier this year and how they "were orchestrated by a senior member of the Politburo who typed his own name into the global version of the search engine and found articles criticising him personally." Now we have a name: Surprise! It's Li Changchun, the Propaganda Chief, a man so sensitive that he already "accidentally" had an entire Chinese city GFWed because it shared his name. more ›

In a laundry list of accomplishments dated Tuesday, the government said it arrested 469 hackers, resolved 180 cases of computer crimes, and closed down 14 websites as part of a move to clamp down on hacking in China. more ›

Here I thought everything was okay again once Google got its ISP renewed here in China. Not so! Fresh from that whole debacle, Google is now facing a crop of completely different problems relating to China, from hunger strikes at its Shanghai offices to subpoenas over the leaked Diaoyu/Senkaku clash. more ›

Cute! Despite the ridiculous holiday schedule this year, I hope everybody enjoys looking up in the sky for the woman who accidentally swallowed a pill and floated to the moon. more ›

This article was also posted on Gizchina. Check it out for daily tech, gadget and 'Shanzhai' news! more ›

We read on Gizmodo earlier today that Google had just integrated it's Skype-like Google Voice function into Gmail. The article also said something that made us perk up - that calls from a US IP to another US or Canadian number would be absolutely free. Since our VPN changes us to a US IP anyhow, we decided to give it a try. more ›

The Google problem is officially over! While Google itself announced being able to obtain a new ICP license for China two weeks ago, last night, the authorities finally issued a statement of their own confirming the fact. more ›

While Google has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Chinese government over its search engine product, its Android mobile platform is doing really, really well. In fact, it's poised to "leapfrog competitors to grab dominence in China," according to Richard Yu at TechCrunch, thanks in part to it being embraced by several of China's biggest mobile companies. more ›

So the fake homepage ploy worked! Last night Google.cn was able to obtain a new ICP license, allowing it to stay operating in China. But was this a good thing? A round up of the opinions below.
• Giving Google its license was a show of political savvy, according to Paul Denlinger of The China Vortex, but the company is still in big trouble here in China. Despite being safe for now, it's worked itself into an incredibly vulnerable position in the country.
• In fact, they kind of blew it, according to Henry Blodget. Now it's not just censoring websites, it's effectively done as a search engine. All you can do on there is product and music searches.
• "It's really like they're back to Square Two... (not as bad as it could have been, but not as good as Google’s position at the end of last year, when it had about a third of the search market and was in second place behind Baidu)" says analyst Mark Mahaney of Citi.

It's been a little over a week now since Google first announced that it would be renewing its ICP license, and thus opening up at least one page on Google.cn before the redirect to Google.co.hk in order to do so... and nothing has happened. The company is still waiting for the Internet officials to get back to it. While most people aren't very optimistic about that happening, the company seems to be hoping that throwing up its ICP license number on the G.cn front page will somehow help its chances. more ›

Haibao has given people a really bad headache. I'm not even talking about his image, just his design. Haibao's original two-dimensional design has created a really difficult problem for those tasked with making him three dimensional: what should his backside look like? Does he have a tail? Does he have a butt? Does he have a buttcrack? These are all unknown. That's why we can see towering Haibao statues whose fronts are all the same, but whose backsides, you will discover, may or may not have buttcracks. But recently, there are more without buttcracks because the buttcracks have already announced that they're leaving China [Note: "Buttcrack" sounds similar to Google in Chinese]. more ›

Try searching for anything inane at all on Google.cn or Google.com.hk (otherwise known as the "new home of Google.cn") and you will now get a connection reset. We tried searching for "shanghai" and all we got was the white screen of death. more ›

It's the Monday after G-day and it seems like, despite lecturing the Internet search company from CCTV and its other mouthpieces, China has yet to block it. Phew. Which makes this fun little Internet tool still relevant - it compares searches between Baidu and Google. Apparently, a good 85% of search results are different! Who woulda thought (hint: maybe everyone)? Anyway, I've been amusing myself this morning doing side-by-side searches of controversial terms. You ought to try it too: baigoogledu.com.cn/ more ›

Google’s departure from China has created a frenzy in the Western media, but the Chinese media has remained relatively quiet. The reason? The Chinese government has ordered the Chinese media to follow a list of specific instructions when it comes to any reporting on Google’s move to relocate its search engine to Hong Kong. more ›

So the fallout begins. Two days after Google’s announcement that it would no longer censor search results in China, Go Daddy, the largest Internet domain registration company, announced Wednesday that it would stop offering new “.cn” domain registrations in China. more ›

So they didn't do this just because of the China problem, but it'll certainly help anyone who thinks they were targeted by hackers here: Google released yesterday a new Gmail feature that notifies you when they detect a suspicious login on your account. Now, if something unusual seems to be going on, it'll alert you with a warning message on the top of your inbox saying "Warning: We believe your account was last accessed from... [location]" By clicking details, you can see last account activity and the most recent access points. Handy! more ›

All those weeks of talks finally came to a head early this morning, as Google stopped censoring its search results in China. Instead of google.cn, users are being directed to an uncensored version of google.com.hk in simplified Chinese. On the company's official blog, Google’s Senior Vice President David Drummond says that routing through Hong Kong is a legal move, although the Chinese government can still block access to the site. By doing so, Google can continue to offer its search engine to Chinese users outside the jurisdiction of mainland Chinese law, a move the WSJ quotes a source as saying seems to be an “elegant solution if it were to hold,” but China will most likely not allow it to continue. more ›

Some time around 2.50am this morning, Google turned the plug off G.cn and Google.com.cn, and redirected users to Google.com.hk with this message "欢迎您来到谷歌搜索在中国的新家" ["Welcome to the new home of Google Search in China"]. Users in mainland China using Google.com also reported being automatically directed to Google.com.hk (we found this to be true on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari. Chrome did not direct Google.com to Google.com.hk). Using the Google search bar on Firefox and Internet Explorer also returns results through Google HK. more ›

According to a Chinese publication (that's based here in Shanghai), Google will announce on Monday the day it will finally shutter its operations in China: April 10. China Business News quoted an unnamed Google employee, but follow up calls to Google headquarters have been met by a resounding "no comment." Also no word on whether "operations" means just the search engine or its many other services. Guess we'll find out next week! more ›