Google parent company's website already blocked in China

folarin okunola

August 11, 2015 5:08 PM

China operates the world’s most extensive and sophisticated Internet censorship system, popularly known as the “Great Firewall”.

New Google CEO Sundar Pichai

Media reports have revealed that the website of Google's new parent company, dubbed Alphabet, was blocked in China less than 24 hours after going live.

Google had unveiled a surprise corporate overhaul on Tuesday forming Alphabet, a holding company that will include Google itself and a handful of independent companies, such as the research arm X Lab, investment unit Google Ventures amongst others.

So far the Alphabet website only has a letter from Google co-founder Larry Page on it with a link to Google’s existing investor relations page.

But the Alphabet website, www.abc.xyz, is already blocked in China, which operates the world’s most extensive and sophisticated Internet censorship system, popularly known as the “Great Firewall”.

Despite the block, Google’s restructuring was widely reported in Chinese official media, including the official Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily.

The Paper, a government-run news website, even named the parent companies’ new website address in its report, adding that the unorthodox mix of letters that form the websites' address “broke with convention”.

California-based Google withdrew from China in 2010 over censorship issues, and the two have continued to have a turbulent relationship, with Beijing blocking Google’s hugely popular Gmail service last year.

folarin okunola