China Has Blocked Microsoft's Bing Search Engine: Report [Update: It's Back]

Update (Jan 25, 2:00 AM IST): Microsoft’s search engine is back online in China after the outage. The news comes from Bloomberg which also reported that the Chinese government didn’t impose any ban on Bing as known earlier. People were unable to access Bing due to some technical issue that has now been resolved.

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China has banned another American technology, and this time it is Microsoft’s Bing. The search engine is no longer available when users residing in mainland China are visiting cn.bing.com. The website can be accessed from countries other than China. When users are visiting the URL, an error message is displayed, and the issue has been persistent from Wednesday.

A report from Financial Times says that China Unicorn, a state-owned telecom operator, has confirmed that the Chinese government has issued a ban against Microsoft Bing and the reason behind the ban is still unknown.

It is not the first time when the Chinese government has censored a website. Twitch, the famous game live streaming video platform was banned back in September 2018. Facebook, Google, and Twitter are already not available in China. China’s “Great Firewall” is a set of legislation that regulates internet domestically censors websites that do not comply with the regulations.

However, Bing’s unavailability is raising questions as Microsoft already agreed to the compliances set by China and was adhering to the state censorship policies. Additionally, it is one of the few services developed by Microsoft that is available in China.

A Microsoft spokesperson said, “We’re aware of reports that Bing may be inaccessible to some customers in China and are investigating.”

China’s stringent control over the internet is a cause of resentment amongst the citizens and is also brewing a trade war which might not be a piece of good news for American companies.