BEIJING — The Chinese government appears to have blocked the ability of people in China to gain access to Google’s email service through third-party email services like Apple Mail or Microsoft Outlook, which many Chinese and foreigners had been relying on to use their Gmail accounts after an earlier blocking effort by officials, according to Internet analysts and users in China.

The blocking began Friday and has ignited anger and frustration among many Internet users in China. Data from Google shows traffic to Gmail dropping to zero from Chinese servers.

But it is not just a matter of convenience for Chinese Internet users. Some foreign companies use Gmail as their corporate email service, for example, and so companies will have to ensure that employees have virtual private network software to get into Gmail.

That software allows users to bypass the Chinese Internet censorship controls commonly known as the Great Firewall, although the authorities also try to inhibit that software.

Google is not the only company censored inside China. Facebook, the world’s largest social network, is essentially blocked there. Its Instagram photo-sharing service was briefly blocked this fall when pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong began using it to share photos with mainland Chinese users.

This time, Gmail appeared to have been singled out. Representatives for Yahoo and Microsoft said Monday that the companies had heard no complaints from users in China about its services being blocked.

China’s position is that the world’s second-largest economy is open to U.S. tech companies, but only on the ruling party’s terms. Those terms are essentially to do business through local partnerships, to host data on Chinese soil — where the government has access to it — and to remove anything the party deems offensive.

Google has prominently refused those demands, which has for years made it a target of the Chinese government. Google does have limited business in the country, like ad sales, but the company’s consumer-facing services, like Gmail, have largely been blocked since 2010.

People in China began noticing the new blocking of Gmail during the weekend, as their third-party mail applications failed to download emails from Gmail accounts if the users did not have VPN software switched on.

“It’s against the spirit of the Internet,” said Yuan Shengang, chief executive of NetentSec, a Beijing-based cybersecurity company.