The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Google is finding its Mobile service suite partially blocked in China. The move on the part of China comes after Google chose to circumvent Chinese censorship and redirect users to a censorship-free Hong Kong website. It now appears that the blockage has been in effect as of Sunday evening.
Google has not formally commented on the matter, telling the LA Times that it is far too premature to determine if the current glitches are born of intermittent technical issues or IF China is willfully blocking Google Mobile services.
Despite the ambiguous comments from Google at this time, threats against the search giant from China are growing at every turn. China Unicom, or example, the nation’s second largest telecommunications provider, will reportedly prevent Google’s search engine from working on Android phones. China Unicom president Lu Yimin says “We are willing to work with any company that abides by Chinese law.” He adds: “We don’t have any cooperation with Google currently.”
The mobile marketing community is eager to take full advantage of the vast Chinese population that is finally growing mobile savvy. If the data presented by the Chinese government is factual, China now has nearly 750 million mobile subscribers, more than half of which actively utilizes some facet of the mobile web.
