• Guardian, Monday, March 21, 2011 1 PM

Google is accusing the Chinese government of obstructing Gmail. "The move follows extensive attempts by the Chinese authorities to crack down on the 'jasmine revolution' -- an online dissident movement inspired by events in the Middle East," the Guardian reports. Over the past month, Google claims that Chinese customers and advertisers have been complaining about their Gmail service.

In particular, users have had issues sending messages, and marking messages as unread. What's more, "In the wake of the catastrophic earthquake in Japan, Google set up an application to help people find relatives and friends lost in the disaster," the Guardian writes. "This service too seems to have been compromised." According to Google: "Relating to Google there is no issue on our side. We have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail."

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