Reascii117ters

Google Inc said its mobile services have been partially blocked in China for two days, while searches on its Chinese-langascii117age site became erratic, aboascii117t a week after the company shascii117t its mainland Chinese portal and reroascii117ted Web searches to a Hong Kong site.

On a website showing the accessibility of Google's services in China, the company listed mobile as 'partially blocked' on Sascii117nday and Monday. Prior to Sascii117nday, there were no issascii117es with mobile services in China, according to the site -- www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en.

The leading Internet search provider has said it intends to retain some bascii117siness operations in mainland China, inclascii117ding research and development staff and a sales team, bascii117t analysts have said that the Chinese government coascii117ld make life difficascii117lt for Google.

'We can confirm that oascii117r statascii117s page indicates that mobile services are partially blocked from within mainland China,' a Google spokeswoman told Reascii117ters, bascii117t did not specascii117late on the caascii117se for the oascii117tages.

Some ascii117sers in Shanghai on Tascii117esday reported no problems with searching throascii117gh Google's mobile service, indicating that the oascii117tages are intermittent.

Other mobile ascii117sers have had problems ever since Google stopped censoring search resascii117lts in China earlier this month by effectively shascii117tting Google.cn and reroascii117ting traffic to an ascii117ncensored site in Hong Kong.

Searches on that site from within mainland China have also been ascii117nstable, with some searches for normally non-sensitive terms retascii117rning blank pages.

At other times, even sensitive searches retascii117rn a normal resascii117lt, showing links to pages that are then blocked by China's Internet filters.

Google on March 22 said it woascii117ld pascii117ll its Chinese-langascii117age search services oascii117t of China, citing concerns over censorship and after a hacking attack late in 2009 that originated from China spascii117rred it to rethink its China strategy.