China blocks western search engines

 

Gallery

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 19 Oct 2007 at 11:38

Reports have surfaced that suggest that the Chinese government temporarily blocked access to Google, Yahoo and Live Search, redirecting instead to Chinese search portal Baidu.

"We've had numerous reports that Google.cn and other search engines have been blocked in China and traffic redirected to other sites," confirms Google, as reported on Search Engine Land.

"While this is clearly unfortunate, we've seen this happen before and are confident that service will be restored to our users in the very near future."

Initially Baidu itself was blamed for hijacking the traffic, however, Search Engine Land has come up with a number of other theories to explain the curious incident, suggesting that the block was the Chinese government's retaliation on the US for handing an award to the Dalai Lama earlier in the week.

It's also the week of the Chinese Communist Party Congress, a five yearly event that traditionally causes the government to ramp up its monitoring of the internet and other communications channels.

Microsoft says it is looking into the incident, although the search engines now appear to be available once more from within China.