By Star Chang, posted Apr 25, 2012 at 12:09 PM, 703 views,

China Internet Users Are Not Allowed to Use Google Drive

Google announced its Google Drive cloud storage service yesterday and just hours later the service was found to be blocked in China, just like Dropbox and countless other Western web services. While the blocking of the new Google service is not surprising, given that Google not so-good relationship with the Chinese authorities. The situation is giving chances to local players to take advantage of Chinese Internet users’ growing interest in cloud services. Apparently, most of the Chinese people are restricted to use international web services …

Baidu, China’s own Google-like Web giant, launched its cloud storage service in beta last month. On the basics, Baidu stacks up well against the competition. Google Drive, which is replacing Google Docs, is offering each user 5GB of free storage, that is less than Microsoft’s Skydrive but more than Dropbox. Baidu’s cloud storage offers a whopping 25GB for basic user. The service is now restricted on initial users by offering just 5,000 invites each day. While Baidu cloud service is the biggest potential service currently active in China, there are likely to be a number of other new services arriving in the market soon to provide additional options for Chinese users.

China has more than 500 million Internet users, making it a hugely attractive market for any Web companies. The unnecessary block are likely to lock Google Drive out of the country, where usage will be restricted to Google enthusiasts that overcome the block by using VPNs. China’s cloud service space could be set to grow in a similar way to social media in the country, which is dominated by local player with the door firmly shut for overseas companies. So what are the reactions from the Chinese Internet user when they found yet another Google service has been block in their country ? A comment from Weibo (aka Chinese twitter): If a product is blocked in China, basically it implies that product should be a good one …

SOURCE: TechNode, TNW Asia