My Experience With the Great Firewall of China
Two notes:<p>1. Never use Google Maps in China; Google Maps in China are just hilariously wrong and out of date and will get you lost. Even if Google Maps wasn't blocked you wouldn't want use it in China. Apple Maps is the best English language solution, it's accurate and up to date; that or Baidu Maps if you read Chinese.<p>2. The OP is missing the point of the GFW. It's not really about censorship. It's mainly about providing a market for local tech startups and about keeping the lower classes from organizing and causing trouble. The party doesn't care is middle or upper class people access the outside internet. They know network effects will keep them using local tech and middle or upper class people are too bought into the system to rock the boat -- after all these people travel outside of China and have a decent knowledge of the world outside. Just assume anything you put through a VPN that advertises as going through the GFW is being monitored. Just like in the elsewhere you'd just assume anything you'd send through Google is being monitored. On sensitive days suddenly all these VPNs are blocked too so the GFW definitely does have the power to block them at will.<p>Finally I find it a bit odd that someone so concerned with privacy uses so many Google Apps. Isn't that rather counter productive?<p>Also, only web based gmail is blocked. Access from Mail.app or iPhone's Mail is not blocked. Sadly translate has been blocked for about a year now... all the more reason to never turn the VPN on your computer or phone off.