Access restored to Google’s e-mail service in China

A four-day outage of Google’s Gmail service in mainland China appeared to have at least partly ended on Dec 30, but has raised questions about the breadth and scope of China’s notorious “Great Firewall”.

China’s so-called “Great Firewall” blocks access to many foreign internet services, including Twitter and Facebook, and new additions to the blacklist are a weekly or monthly occurrence. They are seldom if ever accompanied by any explanation.