Aral Balkan

According to this thread on the Google App Engine forums, it appears that Google App Engine has become unreachable for some Chinese developers as of two days ago, with more developers reporting that their apps have become affected today.

Damien Hou, author of three Google App Engine apps stated that one of his apps has 360,000 users and that as of this morning his apps were unreachable.

This is a total disaster to me!!!! I can't believe this is happening! I feel totally terrified how long this will last.

Damien goes on to theorize about the possible reasons behind such a move, if indeed the Chinese government is blocking parts of Google App Engine:

I don't even want to know why since I know under such cencorship you don't even know who's in charge of such stuff. They simply block anything without a blink of the eyes. I'd guess it's related to some local internet company's plan to enter the cloud computing market. Same thing with facebook's blocking recently.

Currently there are only a handful of reports on the thread but it will be interesting to watch how this develops.

I sincerely hope that this is merely a technical glitch and nothing more sinister. In the meanwhile, my thoughts are with the Chinese developers who are currently unable to reach their applications, regardless of the reason. I can't even begin to imagine how angry (and helpless) I would feel if this was to happen to me and to our application.

As of 2pm GMT on August 14th, there wasn't a response from Google on the thread. I can only assume that they are looking into it and will be updating the forum once they know what's going on.

Hang in there guys, I hope this gets resolved as soon as possible!

Comments

• Realy excelent blog and comments. Thanks and best regards from Private Krankenversicherung

  by Private Krankenversicherung on 2008-09-21 20:23:19

• Umm...it's not Google blocking their users, it's China's "great firewall."

  by Joshua Kugler on 2008-08-14 18:45:41

• Arent google in chinas pockets anyway? I read a while ago how theyve agreed to self censor to get into chinese markets(http://www.newcommreview.com/?p=413). Perhaps theres something in the api that could be misused

  by flashist on 2008-08-18 20:05:55

• Isn't that a risk you take when you're creating apps that completly depend on a free service? I mean, I would find it a bit sad of Google if they would block users, but on the other hand it's there technology. They can do whatever they want.

  by Youri on 2008-08-14 13:52:09

• Yup china is high tech based country. I am sure they must be trying to block google. As such they don't like any intrusion.

  by Tom Schavo on 2008-08-19 07:37:24

• To add to this, Google app engine sites seem to also be blocked in Kazakhstan. Unknown why and to what extent. It's been about two months of it.

  by Josey on 2010-08-23 10:48:11