China Drops Google’s Call

Another step up in the escalating battle between Google and China: The search giant reports that its mobile service is being disrupted in the People’s Republic.

Google, via a page dedicated to “Mainland China service availability,” reports that mobile services are “partially blocked” (see image below; click to enlarge). As the Los Angeles Times notes, this is the first time Google (GOOG) has changed the status of any of its services since it posted the page a week ago.

Taken at face value, the update means that China has moved beyond threats and selective search-query blocks and is now disrupting a key part of Google’s remaining business in that country. Which is pretty much what it has been promising to do over the past few weeks in response to Google’s decision to close down its Chinese search engine.