Google mobile service partially blocked in China

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Search giant Google, which recently moved its Chinese search engine from China to Hong Kong, reported that its mobile Internet service in China was partially blocked. However, Google did not make clear whether the trouble was related to a stand-off over censorship in China.

According to Google, which posted the interruptions in service on a dedicated Web page titled 'Mainland China service availability', services like YouTube, Blogger, Site are blocked in Mainland China, while Docs, Picasa and Groups are partially blocked, apart from the mobile phone services.

"We can confirm that our status page indicates that Mobile services are partially blocked from within mainland China," an AFP report quoted a Google spokesman as saying.

While Mobile services was partially blocked on March 28, other services have been blocked for quite some time. However, Web search, News, Ads, Images and Gmail are functioning.

Google said the blockages have been applied both directly to Google's consumer services, and to organizations using Google services.

Following the tussle with China over censorship, on March 22 with Google stopping its voluntary filtering of online search results in China and moved the site to Hong Kong.