Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more 14 years ago
This is pretty par for the course, given the once / ten years party congress that is going on.
Every year around June 4 (anniversary of Tiananmen "incident") and typically around Oct 1 (national day) Google gets blocked for a few days.
China is much more adept at censoring the Internet than everyone thought 5-10 years ago.