A man walks past a Microsoft sign outside a Microsoft office building in Beijing.
Greg Baker / AFP/Getty ImagesMicrosoft’s Bing search engine is inaccessible in China following a government order, the Financial Times reported late Wednesday.
State-owned telecom company China Unicom confirmed that the government had ordered the block, the Financial Times reported, citing a source. Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment but is reportedly investigating the matter.
If Bing is indeed blocked in China, it would become the second major search engine to exit the country. Google withdrew its search engine and other websites in 2010 to avoid censorship and any compromise to its commitment to a free and open internet.
Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo are among the thousands of websites originating in the west that are blocked by the so-called Great Firewall of China.
Steven Musil is a senior news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers and had a brief stint at MacWeek. See full bio