Image: bfishadow/Flickr
On Monday afternoon, Google surprised the world with Alphabet, its new parent umbrella company, under which all of the internet giant's subsidiaries will live.While everybody was trying to figure out what the hell just happened, Chinese censors quickly responded to the news by blocking Alphabet's new website, abc.xyz. The ban was first reported by GreatFire, a well-known group that monitors Chinese online censorship.
According to GreatFire's monitoring systems, Alphabet's site is completely blocked in China. This appears to be confirmed by another site that allows anyone to test whether a website is blocked in China.The Chinese embassy in Washington, DC did not respond to a request for comment. Google also did not respond by the time of publication.While the blocking was certainly quick, this should come as no surprise. The Chinese government hasn't been a great fan of Google for a long time now. China has systematically censored Google websites and products. YouTube, Picasa and the hosting service Google Sites, have been blocked since 2009. While Google search and Gmail have been inaccessible since last year.-abc.xyz already blocked in China GreatFire.orgAugust 11, 2015