Microsoft's Bing Accessible in China After Hours of Outages

(Bloomberg) -- Internet users in mainland China have begun to report that Microsoft Corp.’s Bing search engine is accessible again after outages in the country persisted for many hours Thursday.

Posting on one of China’s biggest social networks, Weibo, multiple users commented that “Bing is back” and “Bing returns to normal.” Bloomberg was able to independently verify that access to the search engine in the country was once again possible.

Bloomberg News earlier reported that Bing was blocked in China due to an accidental technical error rather than an attempt at censorship, according to people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for Microsoft didn’t immediately return a request for comment regarding the resumed service.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nate Lanxon in London at nlanxon@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Giles Turner at gturner35@bloomberg.net, Kim Robert McLaughlin, Nate Lanxon

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