In recent months, Google has been making inroads back into the Chinese market through various deals and investments. The latest involves a strategic partnership with JD.com — China’s second largest e-commerce company — to the tune of $550 million.

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Earlier this week, Google officially launched its mobile augmented reality platform in China via a partnership with Xiaomi. Today, the company is continuing this return to the populous market by releasing Files Go via four local app stores.

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After launching this February, Google’s platform for mobile augmented reality hit version 1.2 and received a number of new features at I/O 2018. Many flagship devices from the top OEMs feature it, but Google is now working with Xiaomi to make it available in China where its services are traditionally blocked.

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From pushing artificial intelligence research and machine learning tools to local investments, recent weeks have seen a flurry of Google developments in China. The latest has the company partnering with WeChat developer Tencent in a patent cross-licensing deal, as well as promising to collaborate on future technology developments.

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Late last year, we learned that Google is bolstering its Shanghai hardware team tasked with overseeing manufacturing. A new report today reveals that the company has moved into an office in Shenzhen to possibly further expand its hardware capabilities.

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Update: The FT reports that access has been restored for now at least, with a slight pickup in Google’s stats appearing to confirm.

China has tightened its firewall blockade of Google services, reports Re/code and the WSJ, with email apps no longer able to access Gmail via IMAP, POP3 or SMTP. While web access to Gmail has been blocked since June – believed related to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre – users had remained able to access mail using email apps like Apple Mail and Outlook until Friday …  expand full story