YOUTUBE IS BLOCKED IN CHINA

YouTube, the video-sharing Web site owned by Google, said its service is being blocked in China, about a year after the country limited access to the site following protests in Tibet.

The company is working to resolve the issue, which began Monday, spokesman Scott Rubin said yesterday in an interview. He said he didn’t know the cause of the near total blockage, which is limiting access to video clips.

China blocked YouTube last March after the biggest protests in Tibet in 20 years.

China had 298 million Internet users at the end of 2008, according to the government-backed China Internet Network Information Center. It passed the US to become the world’s biggest Web market by users in the first half of last year.

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., fell $1.19 to $347.41 in Nasdaq trading. The shares have risen 13 percent this year.