Google has confirmed that China is blocking its mobile internet services on the mainland, in the first concrete sign that Beijing is stepping up pressure after the search engine last week ended its compliance with the Chinese censors.
Google on Monday switched the status of its mobile services to “partially blocked” from “no issues” on an internal website designed to track the availability of its services in China. The company last week shifted its mainland search engine to Hong Kong to avoid having to comply with censorship restrictions on the mainland.
Google said the availability of its mobile services had started to “fluctuate”. It was unclear whether the disruptions would continue.