China has blocked Bing

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After already shoving most foreign sources of information behind the Great Firewall, Chinese censors appear to have decided to cover all of their bases and block Bing.

Since Wednesday, cn.bing.com has become inaccessible in mainland China, according to our own tests and comments from net users around the country.

While Bing may be the world’s most mocked search engine, it was one of the very few foreign alternatives to Baidu still available to Chinese net users. Google infamously scrapped its own China search engine back in 2010 and Yahoo search became blocked last August.

Though China’s net nanny can often be a fickle mistress, sometimes only blocking sites briefly before restoring access, it certainly appears as though we may have seen the last of Bing. The Financial Times reports that China Unicom was ordered to block Bing for “illegal content.” Meanwhile, a Microsoft spokesperson told the outlet, “We’ve confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next step.”

On Twitter, users have been busy saying their sarcastic goodbyes:

For those of you who are still loath to use Baidu, Russian search engine Yandex still remains accessible in China. At least for now.

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