周二夜间，在谷歌承认自身技术问题导致中国用户大面积无法使用其搜索引擎几小时后，该公司把责任推向了中国政府。
在谷歌发表前后不一的声明之前，中国用户发现无法使用谷歌的搜索服务。这是自谷歌上周宣布将中国搜索服务搬到香港网站、以规避北京方面对政治敏感搜索的审查以来的第一次。自从作出此举后，谷歌和许多观察人士就一直在担心北京方面的反弹。
昨天傍晚时，在中国境内，即便是搜索“狗”、“家”这样无害的关键词，也只能得到浏览器错误的提示。谷歌后来称，中国搜索服务出现了数小时大面积中断，之后重新恢复。
一开始时，这家美国互联网公司表示责任在己，称其在设置服务器时，无意中使得所有的搜索结果都包含了一个在中国被禁的机构的名称，这触发中国过滤外来信息的“长城防火墙”自动开启，屏蔽了所有搜索内容。
但仅仅几小时之后，谷歌称，“一定是因为长城防火墙发生的某种改变”造成了该现象，因为它在一周前就对服务器作出了上述修改，所以如有问题，不会到昨天才集中爆发。另外，搜索服务后来完全回复，而其间谷歌没有对自己的系统做任何修改。
中国政府对谷歌采取的行动，可能会令该公司在全球最大的互联网市场失去大部分收入。
昨天谷歌搜索服务出现的问题，较过去一周中国用户发现的问题要严重得多。过去一周也出现过类似差错，但每次服务中断仅持续了不到一小时。
谷歌一开始表示，它在全球范围为所有搜索查询添加了一个字符串，以改善搜索结果，而该字符串包括字符rfa，恰巧是自由亚洲电台(Radio Free Asia)的缩写。它说：“由于这个参数含有字符rfa，长城防火墙把这些搜索与自由亚洲电台联系起，而后者在中国是长期遭禁的，因此发生了封堵。”
记者昨晚致电中国工业和信息化部以及国务院新闻办公室请其置评，但没有接到回电。
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001031997
Google shifted the blame for widespread unavailability of its search services in China on Tuesday to the authorities in the country, after earlier in the day saying that a technical flaw in its own systems had caused the problem.
The confusion came as many Chinese internet users found themselves unable to reach Google’s services for the first time since it took steps last week to evade Chinese censorship of politically sensitive searches. Google, along with many observers, has feared a backlash from Beijing.
The problems began in the evening in China when searches for words as harmless as “dog” or “home” turned up a browser error. Google later said its users had experienced widespread disruption for several hours, before full service was resumed.
At first, the US internet company took the blame, saying that it had configured its servers by accident in a way that made all its traffic appear to involve an organisation banned by the Chinese government. This had led to an automatic blocking of its search results by China’s “Great Firewall”, which filters information coming into the mainland, it said.
However, several hours later Google said the problem “must have been as a result of a change in the Great Firewall”, since it had discovered that the technical change to its own systems took place a week ago and so could not have caused yesterday’s problems. It added that full service had been resumed, though not as a result of any changes to its own systems.
Action by authorities would raise the threat that Google could lose most of its revenue in the market with the world’s largest internet population.
The search problems appeared to mark a sharp escalation of issues users had experienced over the past week. Similar errors have been reported on a number of occasions, though none lasted more than an hour at a time.
Google had originally said that a string of characters it had introduced to all its search queries globally to improve results included the letters rfa, which happen to stand for Radio Free Asia. “Because this parameter contained the letters rfa the great firewall was associating these searches with Radio Free Asia, a service that has been inaccessible in China for a long time – hence the blockage,” Google said.
Calls for comment to the ministry of industry and information technology and the state council information office went unanswered last night.
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