Google is using a tool Chinese users developed to bypass the Great Firewall
Shadowsocks was developed in China to jump the Great Firewall, and now companies like Google are adopting it even as some debate its security and longevity
China's ability to control what its population sees online is well known. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube -- among others -- aren't accessible in the country.
Yet amidst a harsh crackdown on circumvention tools that help people in China get access to the global internet, one piece of technology -- developed in China -- has proven remarkably effective. It’s also gaining traction elsewhere in the world.
Like other types of proxies, Shadowsocks forwards web traffic through a foreign IP address, allowing users to circumvent censorship or appear like they’re browsing from another location. And though the idea of Shadowsocks was initially developed in China, the individual components that make up a Shadowsocks proxy aren’t anything new.
The result is a highly customizable, encrypted proxy. The customizability of Shadowsocks is perhaps its greatest strength. It can use many different types of encryption, come from servers from any provider anywhere in the world, and the traffic can be obfuscated to look like normal web traffic.