--- title: Gmail Blocked In China | TIME description: Checking your Gmail in China hasn't been a walk in the park over the last few months, but many fingers are pointing to the Chinese government for an outage of the service. canonical: https://time.com/video/jW22DwSg/ og:title: Gmail Blocked In China og:description: Checking your Gmail in China hasn't been a walk in the park over the last few months, but many fingers are pointing to the Chinese government for an outage of the service. og:url: https://time.com/video/jW22DwSg/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/jW22DwSg/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Gmail Blocked In China twitter:description: Checking your Gmail in China hasn't been a walk in the park over the last few months, but many fingers are pointing to the Chinese government for an outage of the service. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/jW22DwSg/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Gmail Blocked In China > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Gmail Blocked In China [Watch (HLS stream): Gmail Blocked In China](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/jW22DwSg.m3u8) (1:00)  _Published 2014-12-29. Checking your Gmail in China hasn't been a walk in the park over the last few months, but many fingers are pointing to the Chinese government for an outage of the service._ --- Jul 27, 2023 5:42 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Google Wants You To Use Gmail To Pay Your Bills](/video/wWlSjRfA/) ### Google Wants You To Use Gmail To Pay Your Bills [The Top 10 Must-Try Gmail Extras](/video/2zgCYM4w/) ### The Top 10 Must-Try Gmail Extras [10 Simple Gmail Tricks You Might Not Know](/video/eJSCCxvv/) ### 10 Simple Gmail Tricks You Might Not Know --- ## Transcript Checking your Gmail in China hasn't been a walk in the park over the last few months, but it now looks to be downright impossible. The service is completely down in the country, and all fingers are pointing to the Chinese government, specifically, the Great Firewall. That's the popular name for the massive censorship tool China uses to ban certain websites, and Google has been a target in the past. The tech giant has sparred with the Chinese government over free speech, complying with the country's censorship policies for years. Before finally defying them in 2010, after hackers with government ties infiltrated Google's servers. Google's transparency report shows a sudden drop in email traffic in China starting on Christmas. It bottomed out the next day. Since March, the server has seen disruptions with users having to turn to virtual private networks. BPNs to access their mail. The tool usually used to bypass the firewall. The Chinese government hasn't commented on the outage and it probably won't. The whole conflict with Google over censorship has itself been censored. So if the government is behind the attack, they're not likely to cough to it. For its part, Google says the outage isn't on the company's end. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Gmail Blocked In China","description":"Checking your Gmail in China hasn't been a walk in the park over the last few months, but many fingers are pointing to the Chinese government for an outage of the service.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/jW22DwSg/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-12-29T16:01:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/jW22DwSg.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/jW22DwSg/","duration":"PT1M","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/jW22DwSg/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```