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Gmail in China

May 11th, 2011 Posted in China, Vpn
May, 11 2011
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I haven't been able to access my Gmail in China for about a week now. Now before I say that Gmail is blocked in China, I realize that different places in China produce different results for different people, different computers, and different operation systems.

Google and Gmail in ChinaI've kept up on lots of the VPN services that unblock sites in China, and even those are a bit shaky – it seems that what works in Guangdong doesn't necessarily work in Xinjiang.  But that's another story.

So a lot of users report that they can access Gmail from China in one place, but not the other.  I'm just one of those guys. For example, with my home computer, running Windows XP SP3, using the Firefox 4 Internet browser (English version), I have about a 30 percent success rate as of May 2011.  That means that I'm able to access my Gmail account in China only 30 percent of the time (when I'm not using my VPN).  Of that 30 percent, only about ten percent of the time am I able to access Gmail in it's full form. Most of the time I've got to view it in basic HTML just open my mail.

internet censorship gmail chinaAt my job it's a totally different story.  When I check my Gmail (or attempt to, per say) on the computer at the office, I get about a 5 percent success rate, if that counts for anything at all.  All of the time I've got to use HTML mode, and most of the time I can't even get Google to search properly.  They are using a Chinese version of Internet Explorer – may IE 6 or 7 I'm not sure.  It's miserable.  The good news is that I've got to check out Bing and Yahoo sometimes – an I've found out that my site is pretty much invisible on those search engines – bummer.  It  must be because they censor their search results, because a lot of the articles I've written over the years are also unavailable.

So I use my VPN most of the time.  For me, it's  matter of convenience. If I have to wait for five minutes for the page to load every time I access Gmail in China (which would be several times a day for me), it would add up to HOURS of waiting time per year.  Maybe even days – just waiting for my stupid Gmail account to load.  So I just connect to my VPN account and it a few seconds I can access my Gmail account normally.

You can check out some of the VPN services I recommend HERE or browse the site.

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Google in China, What’s they’re next move?

May 5th, 2011 Posted in China, Gmail and Google, Internet Censorship
May, 05 2011
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Here's another interesting article about Google in China.  I think the most interesting part of the article is that they summed up Google future options in china pretty well

  • Promote Google strongly in China but continue to sit in Hong Kong.
  • Do something completely different (e.g., a new Chinese search engine).
  • Re-enter China.
  • Do nothing.

Says it pretty well huh?

Seems like this year, with all the turmoil, and now with the new department for monitoring internet censorship and all internet related topics there's going to be some big changes in the next move. According to this article, even Facebook is making some moves in the Chinese market.  Wow. I wonder what Mark Zuckerberg's Chinese name is.

Anyway, some interesting stuff about Google losing face in here. Check it out.

Should Google Escape the Death Spiral in China by 'Losing Face'?

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China raises the bar on internet censroship

May 5th, 2011 Posted in Gmail and Google, Internet Censorship
May, 05 2011
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Here's an interesting article I found about China's internet censorship as of May 2011. It turn out that internet censorship in China isn't strict enough yet, and they've created a new department not only to monitor micro blogging, blogging, and web sites available on the Chinese Internet, they're also going to be monitoring gaming, VoIP calls, and video blogging as well.

I'll tell you, if you want to piss Chinese people off, take away their computer games!  Could you imagine a hoard of World of Warcraft fans gathering in the streets shouting "We want Warcraft", "Give us Orcs or give us death".

Wouldn't that be the day.

Here's the article

China's New IT Authority Could Raise Censorship

 

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