Google search goes blank in China

Web users in China unable to get search results from Google after company makes changes to its site resulting in technical glitch



Internet users across China reported today that they were unable to get search results from Google, after the company made changes to its site that fell foul of the country’s “Great Firewall”.


The US company closed its China-based site last week, carrying out its pledge to stop censoring its search engine due to alleged cyber-attacks coming from inside the country. Instead, users from the mainland are now redirected to Google’s Hong Kong site.


Yesterday, in cities across China, internet users said they were able to reach the homepage but any searches beyond that brought up a blank page and error messages. Even innocuous words such as “Manchester United”, “Sandra Bullock” or “Beijing Olympics” were crashing pages since 5pm today.


Google said that the problems were due to a technical glitch on its part. In the past 24 hours, the letters "gs_rfai" started appearing in Google’s search parameters worldwide. A Google spokeman said: “because this parameter contained the letters rfa the great firewall was associating these searches with Radio Free Asia, a service that has been inaccessible in China for a long time - hence the blockage. We are currently looking at how to resolve this issue."


Google said it is looking at how to resolve the problem. Separately, it also said its mobile services in China were partly blocked on Sunday and Monday. Three days ago, Google’s mobile search function was partially blocked in China by authorities, leaving mobile phone users unable to use the Google search function.


In an interview last week, Google co-founder Sergey Brin implied that the move to the Hong Kong based site had been discussed with Chinese authorities and indirectly approved by them.


Under the “one country, two systems” slogan championed by by Deng Xiaoping, China’s former leader, Hong Kong retains the freedom of speech and British law left behind after the UK ceded the territory to China in 1997.


In January, the search firm said it was no longer willing to self-censor searches blaming increasing internet censorship and Chinese hackers attempts to infiltrate the data of human rights activists in the country.Beijing said Google’s closure of its mainland site was “totally wrong”, and argued that governments worldwide controlled internet content. It has consistently denied internet hacking, which is illegal in China.


The Times. Mar 30, 2010.