Google changes tune, accuses China of blocking search

Google has suggested the Chinese government is to blame for ongoing problems leaving Chinese internet users unable to use its search engine, backtracking on an earlier statement blaming an internal technical glitch.

The search engine's Chinese service, which now redirects to Google's Hong Kong servers after China's refusal to back down on web censorship, was disrupted for large parts of Tuesday, with users reporting that all standard searches were failing though some advanced searches were returning results as normal.

Initial fears were that the Chinese government had stepped in to block access in a long-anticipated backlash over Google's decision to redirect its internet users elsewhere.

However, Google quickly defused the situation by saying the introduction of a new search parameter had inadvertently triggered an existing keyword filter blocking references to Radio Free Asia (RFA), which is banned in China.

"In the last 24 hours 'gs_rfai' started appearing in the URLs of Google searches globally as part of a search parameter, a string of characters that sends information about the query to Google so we can return the best result," the company said initially. "Because this parameter contained the letters 'rfa' the great firewall was associating these searches with Radio Free Asia, a service that has been inaccessible in China for a long time hence the blockage."

But just hours later the company issued another statement with further detail. "Having looked into this issue in more detail, it's clear we actually added this parameter a week ago. So whatever happened today to block Google.com.hk must have been as a result of a change in the great firewall," the company said.

Google's decision to pull its search operations out of mainland China and redirect queries to its Hong Kong servers left many observers expecting the country's government to block the service altogether, especially after Chinese officials called the move "totally wrong".

But while some disruptions had been reported, yesterday was the first time internet users had been left without access to Google services for more than an hour.

And with the issues continuing into today, and reports yesterday that the company's mobile services were being disrupted, it seems the long-expected backlash may have begun.

Read on for our timeline of the dispute between Google and China.