Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday December 30

• China blocks Gmail..:The Gmail blocking began on Friday and has ignited anger and frustration among many Internet users in China. Data from Google shows traffic to Gmail dropping to zero from Chinese servers. But it is not just a matter of convenience for Chinese Internet users. Some foreign companies use Gmail as their corporate email service, for example, and so companies will have to ensure that employees have V.P.N., or virtual private network, software to get into Gmail. Google is not the only company to be censored inside China. Facebook, the world’s largest social network, is essentially blocked there. Its Instagram photo-sharing service was briefly blocked this fall when pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong began using it to share photos with mainland Chinese users. When LinkedIn began offering a Chinese-language version of its business social network this year, it had to agree to censor content seen by Chinese users. This time, Gmail appeared to have been singled out. Representatives for Yahoo and Microsoft said on Monday that the companies had heard no complaints from users in China about their email services being blocked.

• ...and Google Search too: It isn't just Gmail. The government of China, which this weekend launched a tweak to its Great Firewall filtering regime that blocked much of mainland China's access to Google's e-mail service, has on Monday cut off access nationwide to Google Search as well, reports one Internet intelligence expert. And, says Earl Zmijewski, vice president of data analytics at the New Hampshire firm Dyn, the changes aren't the result of some accidental misconfiguration by a ham-handed government engineer in some backwater office somewhere. "This was deliberate," Zmijewski says. "It was pushed out to the whole country at once. Google and the Chinese government have long been at odds, with Google choosing to stop basing operations in mainland China in 2009 in response to Beijing's efforts at censorship. Google has chosen instead to offer services to mainland Chinese using servers located in Hong Kong. (In normal practice, Google attempts to route users to the servers located the closest to them, or otherwise most quickly accessible; a user in New Hampshire, for example, might be routed to New York.) But this week's actions suggest a raising of the Great Firewall specifically to cut that passageway between the Chinese people and Google's services in Hong Kong. Beijing is using the bluntest instrument it has available to it to keep Google out, and isn't worried much about who knows it. Simple blocking of Internet protocol, or IP, addresses is the "easiest and crudest" method that China has for maintaining the effectiveness of its Great Firewall. Beijing also uses so-called "DNS poisoning," or the takeover of the address tables that govern the Internet so that a user who types, say, Twitter.com into her browser window is misdirected to another Web site. And then there's deep packet inspection, such as blocking online references to terms like "Falun Gong" or "Dalai Lama." But those methods can be technologically tricky and expensive.

• Facebook’s popularity among teens dips again, but Instagram is now worth $35B (35x in 2 years), sending Facebook stock to a record high: A report yesterday by Frank N. Magid Associates Inc. found that the portion of 13- to 17-year-old social-media users in the U.S. on Facebook slipped to 88 percent this year from 94 percent in 2013 and 95 percent in 2012. Facebook first warned a year ago that teens weren’t using its website as often as before, then stopped discussing teen usage on its earnings calls after last year’s disclosure alarmed investors. While more people use Facebook and its messaging app than any competitor, its user base tends to be older, with 55 percent of Facebook Messenger users being 37 or younger. By the same measure, 86 percent of Snapchat Inc.’s users and 83 percent of Kik Interactive Inc.’s users are under 37. Facebook sought to buy Snapchat last year for more than $3 billion, and was rebuffed. This has not prevented Facebook stock from reaching record highs: This year Facebook made further headway in mobile, a business that has flourished from a minor portion of ad revenue at the time of the IPO to a majority. Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion has also been paying off: A Citigroup Inc. analyst last week said the photo-sharing app is worth $35 billion.

• Microsoft maybe building a new, lean browser: ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley’s recent report that the software company is building a lightweight browser, codenamed “Spartan,” bears out. According to Foley, Spartan is “new” and “isn’t [Internet Explorer].” Her post notes that it could be set free inside of the Windows 10 release schedule. In short, Microsoft may be building a speedy, simpler browser that maintains use of Internet Explorer’s rendering engine.

• Indian startup action: Six startups graduating from TiE Bootcamp’s fourth batch: Frapp: It is a hyper local deal & offers service exclusively for college students. Simpel: A mobile app that integrates with user’s credit/debit cards in order to help them in making cashless payments at local outlets. MassBlurb: It helps restaurants, spas and salons to showcase their businesses and update their online presence across all leading social media channels, as well as niche sites like Zomato and Tripadvisor etc. CityNaksha: It is a mobile app that enables users to find places of interest including restaurants, ATMs/banks and theatres around them. ChocoFair: It provides chocolate making kits to chocolate lovers both online and offline. HootOut: An online marketing platform that simplifies digital marketing by automating content, social media posts, and web presence.

• Airtel backs off from its plan to charge higher rates for online voice calls, will await regulations on net neutrality: Indian telecom company Airtel will temporarily withdraw the decision to charge a higher rate for making online voice calls on its data network. Airtel last week announced a new plan to charge customers for data usage on instant messaging and VoIP apps like Skype, Viber, Whatsapp, and Line. But now the telecom operator has decided to wait for a regulatory framework to be put in place, according to a statement today from Airtel. Indian telecom regulator TRAI chairman Rahul Khullar had earlier stated that that while Airtel’s move was going against the concept of net neutrality, it was not illegal as there is no policy or regulatory framework in India which mandates operators to adhere to net neutrality. Net neutrality is the notion that service providers must not differentiate between the traffic that flows over their network so that every user and service has equal access to the network.