Google services blocked in China except for Gmail

WASHINGTON — Google's services in China were fully or partially blocked on Thursday with the exception of its email service, Gmail.There was no immediate explanation from Google for the disruption in its services in China, which has been critical of the company for its refusal to self-censor search results and its condemnation of China-based cyberattacks.A Web page maintained by Google on the accessibility to its products in mainland China listed Web search and Google Ads and Google Mobile as "fully blocked" for the first time in weeks.Other services that normally are fully or mostly accessible such as Google Images and Google News were listed as "partially blocked" on the dashboard page at google.com/prc/report.html.Gmail was the only Google service that was listed as "fully or mostly accessible" on Thursday. Other Google products, such as YouTube, have been blocked in China for years.In January, Google said it would no longer censor search results in China and threatened to completely shut down its operations there over what it said were cyberattacks aimed at the email attacks of Chinese human rights activists.China said last week that it had renewed Google's license to operate in the country after the Internet titan agreed to respect Chinese censorship laws.In March, Google said it would no longer bow to government censors and effectively shut down its Chinese search engine, automatically re-routing mainland users to its uncensored site in Hong Kong.In late June, Google said it would stop re-routing and instead set up a new landing page at google.cn with a link to the Hong Kong site.Google.com.hk is intermittently accessible from mainland China but searches for material typically viewed as sensitive by Chinese authorities often return an error message.Google's share of the Chinese search market fell in the second quarter while it was embroiled in the public battle with Beijing, according to research firm Analysys International.Google's share of the world's biggest online market fell to 24.2 percent in

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