A recent glitch in China's notorious "Great Firewall" temporarily allowed Chinese Internet users to access Google, albeit only for a couple of hours.

Reports indicate that Chinese users were able to use Google's services for about two hours this week before it was taken down. According to South China Morning Post, IP addresses from mainland China were able to access Google's website from 11:30 P.M. March 27 until 1:15 A.M of March 28 local time.

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Tech analysts claim that Google was able to bypass China's stiff Internet censorship protocols by introducing a series of new servers based in Asia. These servers were relatively unknown to Chinese officials and it apparently took them a while to identify and block all of it.

The recent slip was the first time that Google's search engine had been accessible in China since the country blocked the service in 2010. Google was blocked in China six months after Beijing announced that its search engine was "inconsistent and unreliable" in the country.

A closer look at the recent event reveal that Google was unblocked in China for 105 minutes. These precious minutes were deemed a win for the search engine in its ongoing censorship battle with China.

The Google China search engine services stopped operation in 2010 after it refused to censor its search results as demanded by the Chinese government. In 2011, Google accused China of allegedly tempering with Gmail in order to stop a social uprising. In December 2014, Google's email service was completely blocked after reports claiming that users can still access Gmail by using third-party apps such as Microsoft Outlook. Google's video sharing service YouTube has also been blocked in China since 2009.

Aside from the Google search engine, reports claim that other Google services such as Gmail and Google Photos were also unlocked temporarily.

TagsGoogle, Google China, china, china great firewall, Firewall, Great Firewall, Google ban, China Google ban, Google services