Shanghai China Snippets Observations about living in Shanghai and China in general

August 4, 2006

Gmail Technical Difficulties in China

Filed under: Chinese Multi Media — Shanghai @ 12:59 am

It gets a bit of a nuisance using [tag]gmail[/tag] in [tag]China[/tag].

gmail china slow

Instead of operating as it should, it regularly shows the message “We’re experiencing difficulties that may prevent your chats from being sent.”

This is a bit of a white lie, as at such moments I can’t read emails or send any. I am sure it is not intentional by [tag]Google[/tag] and I bet we can all blame the [tag]Netnanny[/tag] but it would have been nice if they had negotiated a better deal in letting gmail jump the firewall without a problem.

6 Comments »

  1. Use Thunderbird or Outlook to read and send your gmail emails, that normally works fine even if the Gmail site is temporarily blocked.

    Comment by Marc — August 4, 2006 @ 2:14 am

  2. I will try that, thanks.

    Comment by Shanghai — August 4, 2006 @ 2:29 am

  3. Well, it is no solution for your problems but the same happens in different parts of the world. Guess that is one of the reasons they are just beta.

    Comment by Fons Tuinstra — August 6, 2006 @ 1:44 pm

  4. This actually has not much to do with Gmail being in Beta. When I use a proxy there are no problems at all.

    As far as I can see it has to do with slow international routers due to heavy filtering or whatever other blockades have been put in place to frustrate the user experience

    Comment by Shanghai — August 6, 2006 @ 2:06 pm

  5. make to order your own connection as a laowai. if a chinese person orders from a provider, the chances to have limited bandwith and being monitored is way higher. i heard that from many expats. also businesses tend to have better connections than private ones …

    Comment by phil — February 4, 2007 @ 5:06 am

  6. my connection takes me to a chinese web site
    often no even pop3 will work

    Comment by Seb — March 21, 2007 @ 8:16 am

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