Benzinga | Oct 22, 2021 07:25PM EDT

Tencent Resolves Loopholes Leading To WeChat Access Via Google, Bing: Report

* Tencent Holdings Ltd's (OTC: TCEHY) WeChat has fixed a glitch that led some of its content to be searchable by external search engines on Oct. 22, raising questions on China's internet sector crackdown, Reuters reports.

* Some of WeChat's content, including articles on its public accounts page, was briefly accessible in the last few days on Alphabet Inc's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google and Microsoft Corp's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Bing, but not on China's dominant search engine Baidu Inc (NASDAQ: BIDU).

* "Due to recent technological upgrades, the official accounts' robots protocol had loopholes, which caused the external crawlers to scrape part of the official accounts' content," Tencent stated.

* "The loopholes have since been fixed."

* China's internet sector was long dominated by a handful of technology giants who historically blocked rivals' links and search crawlers, referred to as walled gardens, leading to a regulatory crackdown.

* China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) recently ordered companies to stop blocking links that have affected users' experience and damaged consumer rights.

* The MIIT has also been studying plans and researching to make WeChat content available on external search engines.

* Related Content: Tencent Relaxes Selective Content Access Following Regulatory Crackdown: Bloomberg

* Price Action: TCEHY shares were down 0.67% at $64.60 at the close Friday.