Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

thenextweb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 106 posts

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#51

Post by Torgo »

BryanB55 wrote: post #14

Does anyone know what this means for US websites that use Google Analytics and are visited by people in China? Not that many of my website visitors are in China but I'm wondering if it will also stop the tracking code from working. I'm guessing it would since it won't be able to connect back to GA.

I maintain sites using both the older synchronous and newer asynchronous Google Analytics. I also personally as a matter of course block Google Analytics using a few adblock rules. As a user I have never experienced page breakage due to blocked analytics, and as a site maintainer I have witnessed that you simply don't get analytics information from those users. I've had clients freak because their Google ecommerce data doesn't add up, but in the end that information relies on trusting the client.

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#52

Post by aes256 »

caycep wrote: post #24

Hope this shoots the CCP in the foot. The interwebs are awash w/ the latest US election results, and viral youtube videos of Obama thanking his young twentysomething campaign staffers. To give young Chinese such a glimpse of this and then brutally remind them that they don't have such luxuries of idealism and empowerment just highlights the failings of the CCP system even more...

> The interwebs are awash w/ the latest US election results, and viral youtube videos of Obama thanking his young twentysomething campaign staffers.

Strangely enough, those kind of images remind me of a Chinese-style dictatorship. Legions of apparently adoring fans worshipping their benevolent leader, chanting slogans, etc.

To the rest of the world, the presidential election is a reminder of everything that is wrong with America.

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#53

Post by monkeypizza »

olalonde wrote: post #38

I'm located in Shenzhen, China and all those domains work as usual except for Google+ and Google Docs which have been banned for a while. Google DNS also works as usual. Even Google.cn redirects to Google.com.hk as usual. Guess I'm either lucky or this was a very short lived ban in the middle of the night. edit: Reading the article again, it seems Google didn't actually confirm the block. They simply stated there was…

from my testing, google.com and gmail have been blocked in Beijing for a few days now.

Of course, this is the same government that forced taxi drivers to remove the handles from their taxis so passengers can't roll down their windows, because they were afraid someone would drive by Tiananmen square and drop a bunch of ping pong balls with political messages on them.

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#54

Post by nickpinkston »

monkeypizza wrote: post #53
olalonde wrote: post #38

I'm located in Shenzhen, China and all those domains work as usual except for Google+ and Google Docs which have been banned for a while. Google DNS also works as usual. Even Google.cn redirects to Google.com.hk as usual. Guess I'm either lucky or this was a very short lived ban in the middle of the night. edit: Reading the article again, it seems Google didn't actually confirm the block. They simply stated there was…

from my testing, google.com and gmail have been blocked in Beijing for a few days now. Of course, this is the same government that forced taxi drivers to remove the handles from their taxis so passengers can't roll down their windows, because they were afraid someone would drive by Tiananmen square and drop a bunch of ping pong balls with political messages on them.

Yea, I was having on-off problems with Google domains as I traveled from Xinjiang (Google blocked) to Shenzhen (Open) to Beijing (Spotty Open) - is it that fickle all the time? Is it by region, time, or whim?

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#55

Post by wisty »

dak1 wrote: post #11

If I had to wager a guess, I'd say this is probably due to the 18th Party Congress going on in Beijing right now, and that the block will be lifted sometime in the next week, once the transfer of power is over. I think we may see some more moderates come to power, so I wouldn't expect this to continue. Whether or not Wang Yang gets a seat in the Standing Committee will be a good bellwether though.

To elaborate, there are 2270 delegates who will choose the next standing committee. But those delegates will have been told who to vote for. Premier Wen, former Chairman Jiang Zemin, and other powerful members will have strong opinions, and may be unhappy with the make-up of the next committee. A deal has presumably already been struck, but that doesn't mean they can't possibly have a change of heart. The current leadership is leaving, and the new ones aren't entrenched, so it's a delicate situation.

Chairman Hu retains control of the military for the next 2 years, to discourage things from getting all Game of Thronesy, but they don't want to take any chances.

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#57

Post by seanmcdirmid »

nickpinkston wrote: post #54
monkeypizza wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from my testing, google.com and gmail have been blocked in Beijing for a few days now. Of course, this is the same government that forced taxi drivers to remove the handles from their taxis so passengers can't roll down their windows, because they were afraid someone would drive by Tiananmen square and drop a bunch of ping pong balls with political messages on them.

Yea, I was having on-off problems with Google domains as I traveled from Xinjiang (Google blocked) to Shenzhen (Open) to Beijing (Spotty Open) - is it that fickle all the time? Is it by region, time, or whim?

Each ISP has their own implementation of the golden shield, so different regions will block different things. The system is entirely opaque to us, I wouldn't be surprised if blocks were determined at the decentralized local level rather than by the central government. Beijing ISPs blocking more during this "sensitive time" would be consistent with that thought.

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#58

Post by monkeypizza »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #37
CWuestefeld wrote: post #34

Aargh. I'm leaving for a vacation in China in a week and a half. I guess I'm going to have to set up my own VPN tunnel to ensure that I can still access my email, etc. I'm assuming I can set something up through my dd-wrt router at home. Off to read the docs...

When I was in China for a year, I just used a company dev server with a ssh socks proxy. It worked well, and it is one command in the terminal, and changing 1 setting in network preferences. This is much easier than trying to find VPN service that isn't blocked.

if you have shell access to a hosting account...

autossh -M 25841 -ND 127.0.0.1:8088 -i /home/.ssh/id_rsa user@host.com

and then tell your browser (or foxyproxy) to use it. one-line vpn that probably won't get blocked by china, ever.

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#59

Post by seanmcdirmid »

creativityland wrote: post #22
smokeyj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> eventually trigger revolution. These are the Chinese we're talking about..

Just a few to note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Revolution

Anyone starting a revolution now would technically be labelled as a counter-revolutionary (this is the terminology they use at least).

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#60

Post by seanmcdirmid »

caycep wrote: post #24

Hope this shoots the CCP in the foot. The interwebs are awash w/ the latest US election results, and viral youtube videos of Obama thanking his young twentysomething campaign staffers. To give young Chinese such a glimpse of this and then brutally remind them that they don't have such luxuries of idealism and empowerment just highlights the failings of the CCP system even more...

They don't care about their international image. Wondering in the press on why "the world doesn't trust China" is a complete red herring, they really don't care and think they are in a strong enough position not to care.

Everything went downhill after the 2008 Olympics, I mean, Twitter, Facebook, everything was open before that. Now? Its getting worse and worse every month.

Post reply on HN