Google Outage Shows Business Risks in China

By CARLOS TEJADA And PAUL MOZUR

BEIJINGDisruptions to Google Inc.'s Web-search and email services in China over the weekend underscore the uncertainty surrounding Beijing's effort to control the flow of information into the country, as well as the risks that effort poses to the government's efforts to draw global businesses.
Google saw widespread disruptions to its Web services in China on Friday, according to the company's "transparency report" website. Amir Efrati has details on The News Hub. Photo: AFP/Getty Images.

Chinese users of many of Google's services reported a lack of access late Friday, halting use of everything from Google's search engine to its Gmail email service to its Google Play mobile-applications store. The Mountain View, Calif., company said that its own statistics showed a sharp decline in traffic from China, and it said that the problem didn't appear to be within its equipment. Services returned on Saturday, though users in some parts of the country said use was unpredictable and unreliable over the weekend.
Google's offices in Beijing. Chinese users faced a lack of access late Friday to services such as email and Web searches.

The source of the disruptions couldn't be determined. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, an agency that oversees China's Internet industry, didn't respond to list of questions sent on Sunday. Internet experts pointed to China's Internet censorship efforts, which have been ratcheted up ahead of the 18th Party Congress, a meeting of top Communist Party leaders in Beijing that began on Thursday. The meeting is expected to end this coming Thursday with the unveiling of a new slate of top party leaders, making it a sensitive time in the eyes of Beijing. "There appears to be a throttling under way of Web access," said David Wolf, founder of consulting firm Wolf Group Asia. Citing recent articles in foreign media about corruption and wealth in China spurred by the party congress and the fall of former party star Bo Xilai, he said, "that's their primary concern, people getting news either through Google or through its services." Chinese authorities often tighten Internet control around sensitive subjects and events. But a number of users in recent weeks say Internet disruptions have worsened to an unexpected degree ahead of the congress. In a recent interview, Matthew Prince, chief executive of CloudFlare Inc., a company that provides Webperformance and security services for websites, said the company's engineers and

consumers have reported increased difficulties with traffic out of China since the end of August. The websites of the New York Times and Bloomberg News became unavailable in China this year just as each ran articles describing the wealth accumulated by China's leaders. Attorneys for the family of Wen Jiabao, China's premier, denied the Times's report that his family had amassed a $2.7 billion fortune over two decades, and a Foreign Ministry spokesman has said the report "blackens China and has ulterior motives." The family of Xi Jinping, China's vice president and the widely expected successor to Hu Jintao as China's president and head of the Communist Party, hasn't commented publicly on the Bloomberg article, which detailed wealth accumulated by Mr. Xi's family. Neither article accused the leaders of wrongdoing. Sophisticated Chinese users can use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to circumvent the system of Internet blockages that is sometimes called the Great Firewall. But some VPN operators, such as the Witopia service, in recent weeks also have said they have been blocked. Google's services are still widely available in China despite its declaration in 2010 that it wouldn't censor its search results in China anymore and would shift searches to Hong Kong, a Chinese city that isn't subject to Beijing's censorship restrictions. But the services can be unreliable and sometimes don't function right away, troubles that experts attribute to Beijing's censorship efforts. Google is now only a minor player in terms of market share in China's search business, which is dominated by Baidu Inc. Beijing risks a backlash if it were to block Google outright on a long-term basis, said Mr. Wolf, of Wolf Group Asia. Many corporate users rely on Gmail and other Google services, and a blockage could make China a less-attractive place to do business. In addition, disruptions are increasingly unappealing to businesses that rely on cloud services, which are offered by Google and others and in which data are stored remotely. "If China insists in the medium and long term of creating another Great Firewall between the China cloud and the rest of the world, China will be an increasingly untenable place to do business," Mr. Wolf said. Such a move also could put Beijing in violation of its free-trade commitment under the World Trade Organization, which China joined in 2001. China has said it complies with WTO requirements.