Amazon, Microsoft, and U.S. Cloud Companies in Hot Water over Chinese Censorship

The Chinese government is tightening its grip on Internet censorship as it targets U.S. cloud companies including Amazon, Microsoft, and Akamai Technologies. According to the Wall Street Journal, cloud companies are now caught in a crossfire between the Chinese government and Internet activists in the country.

Free-speech activists around the world are using the cloud services of U.S.-based companies to access blocked websites in Beijing. And, many of these cloud companies are said to be clueless. Hence, companies like Verizon are now banned in China.

Verizon’s EdgeCast was purged in November last year. Cisco suffered the same fate while Google decided to pull out its operations in 2010 due to Internet censorship. Some companies are taking a proactive approach. Last week, Content-Delivery Network (CDN) company, CloudFlare, removed the crafty app Lantern from its service.

Lantern, developed by an American programmer, is an app that evades censors. The app uses CDNs to route a copied version of a blocked website. CDNs help websites run faster by distributing copies of a website to servers around the world. Other activist groups like Greatfire.org and Tor are using a similar method. Chinese president, Xi Jinping, intensified Internet censorship in the country. China’s Great Firewall is as strong as its wall, and businesses aren’t benefiting from it.