Thaindian News

London, Mar.21 (ANI): Search giant Google has accused China of interfering with the operations of the company’s famous Gmail services.

Gmail customers in China have complained during the past month of experiencing problems with the e-mail service, including difficulty in sending e-mails and marking them as unread, in addition to other issues.

Google set up an application to help people find relatives and friends lost in the Japan disaster, this service too seems to have been compromised, The Guardian reports.

“Relating to Google there is no issue on our side. We have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail,” said a Google spokesman.

The revelations follow a blog posted by Google on March 11, in which the firm said it had “noticed some highly targeted and apparently politically motivated attacks against our users. We believe activists may have been a specific target.”

The posting said the attacks were targeting vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser. The two firms have been working to address the issue.

Tensions between China and the search giant have been smoldering since Google disclosed the theft of intellectual property disclosed in January 2010.

It revealed that Google and atleast 20 other companies were the victims of a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” aimed at gathering information about Chinese human rights activists.

Google first opened its business in China in 2005. But after announcing that it had been hacked in January last year the company said it was no longer prepared to censor its search results and moved its operations to Hong Kong. (ANI)