China Blocks Access to Gmail App and Android Market

Posted by Dave

October 10, 2011

China has enforced a block on both the Gmail and Market apps for Android devices, rendering both apps to be almost useless on millions and millions of smartphones and tablets in the country.
It’s no secret in the tech world that China dislikes Google. The nation has enforced strict censorship laws on the hugely popular search engine site which have resulted in an ongoing battle between Google and the country.
China has now made a move to block citizen’s access to the Android Market and Gmail for Android applications. The Gmail website is still accessible for everyone, though the server that Google’s Gmail Android app runs from has been blocked.
Android users in China have reported extremely slow or non-existent access to both Gmail and Market on their Android devices over the past week.
Google’s social network, Google+, was banned within one week of going live publically in China.
Users who rely on the default ‘Mail’ app on Android devices will be unaffected, even if using a Gmail or Googlemail email account with it. Similarly, third party Android app stores will remain unaffected.
At the moment the Android Market app is intermittently working, though many sources are saying it has gone down completely for long periods of time over the past 3 days.
The exact reason for the outage of both services remains to be clarified, but many are already presuming it was a purposeful block imposed by the nation’s government.

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