Yet another day, and yet another block behind China’s great internet firewall. Microsoft’s Bing search engine is the latest victim of China’s growingly aggressive (it was already pretty aggressive to be honest) internet censorship policy. Bing is inaccessible in China as of now, with Microsoft officially confirming the same.
We’ve confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next steps.
the company said in a statement
Microsoft however, isn’t new to Chinese blockage. This is the Redmond giant’s second date with the country’s internet censorship policy, the first one being in November 2017, when Skype was taken off the Android and Apple app stores.
The Financial Times, citing a source, reported on Wednesday that China Unicom, a major state-owned telecommunication company, had confirmed the government order to block the search engine. Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), a government watchdog, did not respond to Reuters’ faxed questions about Bing’s blocked website.
Interestingly, Bing was the only non-Chinese major search engine that Chinese populace could access from within the country. This was because of Bing’s compliance with the country’s censorship policies, wherein the search engine heavily censored search results on sensitive topics.
