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The Great Firewall of China strikes again. (via Techland)
As if users in China didn’t already have to put with the fact that Facebook and YouTube are already blocked, there have been reports that China is deliberately slowing down access to Google’s services. Gmail users in China say the service has been “…slower definitely. By far. Sometimes we’ve been unable to connect, and many times unable to use Gchat.”
(More on TIME.com: See a brief history of China’s censorship)
Google has gone so far as to say that China is responsible. The Guardian quotes one internet executive saying, “…making it look like a fault in Google’s system was extremely difficult to do and the fact that these attacks appear to come and go makes the attack look ‘semi-industrial and very, very sophisticated.’”
The slowdown of services seem to be related to China’s recent crackdown on their “jasmine protests.” They occurred just shortly after revolutions erupted in the Middle East.