The move for banning YouTube in Pakistan over anti-Islam movie on the video website has resulted into sluggish overall internet experience and notably high latency rates for Google Services, mainly on PTCL and EVO networks, ProPakistani users have reported to us.
We are told that almost all Google Services have slowed down or are not available in many cases. Google Search, Blogger, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Play, Google Docs and other Google services are apparently impacted due to a technical glitch on ISPs’ part.
Google’s Transparency report is also hinting reduced traffic from Pakistan for all Google products, however, due to delayed reporting it is likely that we get a clearer picture from Google by evening.
ISPs aren’t commenting anything on the situation but said that they will look for any abnormalities in services to get them fixed.
A network expert, while commenting on the situation, opined that this delay or inaccessibility of other Google services could be due to cross-site objects that are now blocked because of YouTube ban but are necessary for running other Google services. This includes, and is not limited to, account information services, javascripts, style templates and other similar things that are now a days stored at centralized locations to enhance speeds and user experience.
Users on Chrome Browser are likely to be more exposed to such Google services issues.
A possible solution could be to allow certain file types from YouTube (such as .js, .css and others) while disallowing Video Content through filters that ISPs are using.
Internet users in Pakistan are calling for better filter management from ISPs during the YouTube ban, which is likely to last for at least a week – if not more.