Google gave a short burst of hope to Internet users in mainland China when long-blocked Google Search began working.
At that moment, I even believed that Google was unblocked and that free speech had come back to [mainland] China again, said Li Yue, a Shenzhen-based IT engineer, in an online post, according to South China Morning Post.
The breach in the so-called Great Firewall reportedly came Sunday night, local time. But within hours, Internet users in China began posting about an apparent loss of access. Now, it s blocked again, Xiaohu Erin posted on Chinese micro-blogging site Weibo at 1:16 a.m., according to the Morning Post. We should remember the short period of happiness.
A Beijing tech blog called Pingwest said access to Google Search, as well as to Google s Drive, Photos, and Play began around 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. local time, according to digital magazine Quartz.
Google in 2010 withdrew a censored version of its search service from the Chinese mainland after a dispute with the Chinese government over online freedom, and a reported hack attack. Google directed all traffic through its Hong Kong search engine, to which China blocked access. China also blocks Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (which reportedly was also accessible for a short time Sunday in China), and many other sites.
The Washington Post reported that Chinese tech websites speculated that access to Google became possible Sunday because Google had introduced new IP servers, but the paper noted that the apparent availability of Instagram tended to contradict that theory.
At least one user took advantage of the search function to make a political statement, posting online the search results for the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters in 1989, according to the Washington Post.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for an explanation.
Photo: The Google logo (KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)
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