Google+ Made Unavailable In China: REPORT

Google+, the search giant's social network, has already been made unavailable in China.

According to Great Firewall of China, a China-based service that checks the availability of sites within the country, Google+ has been made inaccessible just a day after its debut. Sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Foursquare are already blocked in the country, which has a famously restrictive censorship policy over its Internet.

However, China hasn't completely prevented its citizens from accessing the site. According to Penn-Olson, China is not blocking the site, but is throttling the speed of the site so greatly that it may as well be unavailable.

"Web throttling is a tactic new to China’s Great Firewall, and has been seriously slowing pretty much all overseas internet speeds all year," Penn-Olson explains. "Gmail particularly has been horribly throttled, to the point were it can take five or ten minutes or more to go from the login page to your inbox. It’s a very underhanded tactic [...] [that is] actually rendering it [the service] nearly useless to its users."

Outside of China, demand for Google+ has been so great that the service's invite system was temporarily put on hold Wednesday night.

To learn more about the Google+ project, check out our slideshow of 9 things you need to know about the new social network.

Comments

[BestVpnProvider]

11:44 AM on 07/13/2011

Google plus blocked in china, bad news for this new social network ! Chinese are really affraid of social networks...maybe they don't know what is a VPN...everyone can access to facebook and twitter and bypass country restriction. Have a look at http://www.best-vpn-provider.com .Hope it will helps

[Blackageddon]

03:25 PM on 07/01/2011

After living in China, I can say that its "Great Firewall" is one of the single most intrusive elements of daily life there. Not having the ability to read information about Tibet beyond the basics of its language and geography is a prime example of the insidious control the government exerts over the flow of information to its people. And in some cases, nothing's worse than not knowing what you don't know.

[imonlyhereforthelaughs]

01:18 PM on 07/01/2011

So how is it that I've been with Google since the first month that gmail was an invite-only beta, but everyone in China gets head-of-line privliedges for the new Google+???

[Jimmy2010]

12:28 PM on 07/01/2011

Can anybody tell me that why http://www.dongfangtime.com/ is blocked in the campus of University of South Carolina?

[Michael Fallow]

05:34 AM on 07/01/2011

I was invited to use Google+ for my business website based in the US. I am in China. I logged into the website files and installed the script codes for Google plus into several pages of the website as a test. Was then required to register with Google. It took a long time to reach the Google page for registering, then later checking the pages where I'd added Google+ I found the pages were taking a long time to load - I'm viewing them in China. Since it's a business site the last thing I wanted was an app that slowed access to the pages so I un-installed them. Since contacting Google directly is impossible I was looking for an explanation of the slow loading pages. Seems I've found the answer here in this article - 'web throttling'. I suspect it also explains why at times my e-mail programs take forever to connect and download mail. There's much I like about China but this fanatical control and manipulation of the internet by the government is very annoying. It is fortunately erratic.

[socialfan]

01:43 AM on 07/01/2011

AvatarScope.com has a similar idea and uses google account for login. Doesn't collect any other personal information. Seems to have better privacy than circles. Interesting Concept.

[rgilley]

11:26 PM on 06/30/2011

This is the America right wing Republican corporatist would prefere.

[Down in FL]

11:23 PM on 06/30/2011

Is this surprising? China and Google had a very public falling out.

[frank day]

10:58 PM on 06/30/2011

I feel so sad for China's peoples.

[Steve Lives]

01:34 AM on 07/01/2011

I feel the same way, about everybody.

[Leo Frederick]

02:13 AM on 07/11/2011

China also supports its products like Twitter(Weibo),Facebook(Qzone),Youtube(Youku),but not anything could be posted on his websites.Finding ways to use these real worldwide websites has been a big thing for Chinese people,it's painful and interesting.I'm glad I can communicate these things with you from China.I love Internet.

[rojcar]

07:49 PM on 06/30/2011

China can never be great as long as it hides ideas and information from its people. Ignorance is no way to become great - wake up Chinese people! You are in bondage.

[redyst]

06:27 PM on 06/30/2011

Is this the new arm of Big Brother? Ever since Egypt did it, everyone's been tail-gating.