Compliance Management, Privacy

Gmail service possibly restored in China following four-day outage

Nearly five days after access to Gmail was blocked in China, it appears that traffic is returning to the email service, according to Financial Times report.

China-based Gmail users Friday reported issues accessing accounts via third-party email services, including Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook. Although traffic from China was noted on Tuesday, one expert told the Financial Times that didn't necessarily indicate normal service was restored.

Multiple news outlets and Chinese censorship watch groups attributed the outage to the country's “Great Firewall.” Meanwhile, Chinese state-run media blamed the company's failure to adhere to Chinese law for the outage. An editorial in the Global Times said: “Google values more its reluctance to be restricted by Chinese law, resulting in conflict.”

Gmail and all of Google's services were initially blocked in June, before the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. 

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