Hi,
Is it just me or is Gmail chat really blocked since last week?

Is this just at work? Often IT depts. block things like Gmail and chat.

If this is this case there are get arounds. Just Google 'gmail blocked'.

Otherwise I don't know. Nothing on the web about it.

Well, yes, at work and at home. But I am the IT department!

Ah! So we know who to blame...LOL.

seems fine. fire the IT department?

similar probs here in Chengdu last weekend. Now it works again. Download gtalk
www.google.com/talk/

This year is the 12th Five Year Plan summit in Beijing. Lots of things are more rigorous - to include the internet. This typically goes on for a month or so - and right now, especially so in light of the attempts by various groups to forment the anarchy in the middle east.

I'm having intermittent connectivity failures with gmail, gmail chat, google calendar and maps.google.com.

I'd imagine it's part of a concerted effort to shift Chinese users to Chinese-based providers of cloud-based services by making google appear unreliable, even though it is anything but.

I am finding connectivity to anything pretty poor this week.

Who ever knows the real answer to unreliable connectivity. I suspect laotou has the answer (see above) and I've made the same point to colleagues in past years and adding things will return to 'normal' in due course. But I'm also convinced in my own mind Master Shake has a good point. Just recently I found myself wanting to scream at a BBC interviewer accepting the explanation of a Baidu spokesperson as to the 'success' of Baidu over Google search. The latter is made to appear unreliable. Similar tactics appear to be used in other fields: huge publicity to overcharging in foreign supermarkets, unhygienic conditions in KFC and tainted milk from overseas. The list is endless.