It turns out - for now - that this past weekend's service outage is not the latest in the Google vs. China saga. A Google spokesman told CNET that a "technical issue" related to an update was the cause for Sunday's service interruption to the Market and Gmail Android apps. According to the spokesman, the malfunction has been fixed, and the apps are back in operation. We checked Blocked in China and Great Firewall of China, both designed to test whether a site has been blocked, and both show that access has been restored to the Android Market website.

Read the full story at The Verge.

There are reports from China that the government there has blocked access to both Market and Gmail on Android devices. Google has yet to comment on the service outage, and the government is not expected to as it regularly blocks access to websites without notice. According to MocoNews, access to both of the services has been intermittent in China since Sunday. A quick check of Blocked in China shows that Chinese servers are currently unable to access the Android Market website.

This possible service blockage would merely be the latest in a battle between Google and China that has spanned more than a year now. The search giant ceased operati …

Read the full story at The Verge.