The greatest and popular email service Gmail was blocked in China and according to the anti-censorship advocate the reason is the Great Firewall. Massive number of the Gmail based web addresses were powered off on Friday. The last report from on Monday claims that the Gmail server is still blocked.
According to the GreatFire.org, the China government is pledging to decrease the existence of Google's presence in China. The reason behind the anti-Google outlook has not been cleared by any sources.
The disruption in Google services in China has been rapidly taking place from June this year but until now users were able to use Gmail and access in the download protocols like POP3, SMTP, IMAP. However, Gmail has responded and reported that their system was under safe monitoring surveillance and nothing unusual was noticed by the server to shut it down.
China Government holds strong control over the Internet access with restrictions and sophisticated censorship. Critics have claimed that the country is trying to cut off the foreign Internet services to ensure that the local security is at the utmost level.
China Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying has denied knowing anything about the issue. She indicated that China has always maintained the good business environment for the foreign investors and they would not do anything that disrupts the relationship. However, the supportive attitude towards the great business transparency has been questioned by the recent move of the government. There is still an open gate for the Gmail users to access their mail using Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, which lets user to access the blocked sites.