eldavojohn writes “Massive confusion occurred last night for Google’s Chinese search engine and ad services when Google’s automated reporting system claimed that everything was blocked in China. The problem was that most users experienced no outage despite Google’s reports and Google has backpedaled on those reports. Google explained that their tool for detecting blockage is not ‘real-time’: ‘Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it’s possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally.’ The WSJ blogger notes, ‘Beijing may not need to cancel Google’s license. Death by a thousand disruptions could be just as effective.’”

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China’s Firewall Stymies Google; Users Confused