Bing, the Microsoft’s search engine was blocked in China accidentally on Wednesday and the outage persisted until Thursday. No other international search engine is accessible in China other than Bing. The stringent policies and censorship in China have ensured exit of major international players like Google among others.

“We have confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next steps,” said a Microsoft spokesperson CNN after the outage was reported on Wednesday.  Reports claim that the outage was accidental and due to technical reasons. Now the search engine is accessible again for the users in China.

The Chinese search engine market is dominated by Baidu. The country has a huge market but its strict rules and regulations make it hard for international competitors to enter or survive in China. Google pulled out of China in 2010.

As per China Internet Network Information Center, 802 million people in China are active internet users. It is by far the largest population of internet users in the world. India has close to 500 million internet users followed by US with approximately 300 million internet users.

Microsoft is still investigating into the reasons why Bing was blocked. Several users reported that they were unable to access Bing since Wednesday afternoon. But with Bing back online, Microsoft can heave a sigh of relief for now.

The Chinese government’s firewall known as the Great Firewall has blocked several global platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Youtube & Yahoo.

Microsoft launched Bing for China in June 2009. It had modified itself in line with the Chinese regulators and their censorship norms. The web analytics service, SimilarWeb, reported that Bing received over 220 million page views every month.

With the widening rift between China and US, the growing tensions could escalate and impact the technology companies like Apple etc. who are relying on the Chinese market for their growth.

The US has introduced a Bipartisan Bill, if passed, would ban the export of US Chips and other technology to Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE. The trade war between the two countries may escalate even further in the next few months amidst the uncertain geoclimate.

The Chinese government has been on a censorship spree and has banned several apps and news service of late. Last week, it shut down more than 700 websites, 9300 mobile apps and that included Tencent’s popular news service app.

The digital crackdown has hurt many technology companies and social media platforms including Wechat-operator, Tencent etc. In 2017 alone, the Chinese government shutdown 128,000 websites. The Chinese official Xinhua news agency reported that these websites contained obscene and harmful information.  

In an era of globalisation, technology can play a vital role in building bridges between countries, take trade and cultural relationships to a new high.