That didn’t take long. Tons of people haven’t even gained access to the Google+ field trial yet, but that hasn’t stopped Chinese authorities from blocking Google’s brand new social networking project, reports Ren Media.
Indeed, Just Ping and the Greatfirewallofchina.org website both confirm that plus.google.com is not accessible from mainland China.
The censoring itself isn’t too surprising; Chinese authorities aren’t too keen on U.S. social networks and block services such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Foursquare.
Still, I’m taken aback by how swiftly China responded to the formal debut of Google+, which until further notice is an invitation-only beta product (although, admittedly, one that has enjoyed a lot of international press over the past 24 hours).
Update: Penn-Olson says Google+ wasn’t blocked, just made impossible to use by slowing it down to a crawl, which essentially comes down to the same thing: censoring.
A Google project headed by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, Google+ is designed to be the social extension of Google. Its features focus on making online sharing easy for users. “Circles,” think social circles, akin to Facebook’s lists. “Sandbar,” a user-unifying toolbar. “Sparks,” a search engine for sharing content between users. “Messenger,” a group messaging app that allows users to share with certain “Circles.” “Hangouts,” group video chatting designed to allow up to 10 users video chat at once. Each Google+ user can replace his...
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