Chinese Paper Blames Google For Gmail Woes In The Country

Yesterday we talked a bit about Gmail problems in China and the fact that some in the country were blaming the outage on China's massive firewall known as the Great Firewall. Chinese state media has announced that the issue with Gmail in the country is Google's fault for not being willing to obey Chinese law. Chinese paper Global Times laid the blame squarely at Google's feet in an editorial.

The Global Times wrote, "China welcomes the company to do business on the prerequisite that it obeys Chinese law; however Google values more its reluctance to be restricted by Chinese law, resulting in conflict." Problems accessing Gmail have been going on since last summer during the lead up to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square when China decided to crack down on pro-democracy demonstrators.

Until this week, Chinese Gmail users were able to access Gmail using third party applications, but those have now been blocked by the Chinese government. Google officially pulled out of China in 2010 after fighting with the Chinese government over censorship.

Google maintains that the issue is not on its end. The global Times is loosely tied to the ruling Communist Party in China and wrote in the editorial that if the government bared access to Gmail it "must have been prompted by newly emerged security reasons.

SOURCE: The Guardian