Iran Lifts Block On Gmail 46
redletterdave writes "After blocking Google's Gmail service for a little more than a week, the Iranian government has decided to remove the digital barrier after a barrage of complaints, some of which came from Iran's own parliament. While the Iranian government has released no official statement as to why Google's Gmail service was blocked in the first place, several Iranian news agencies reported the ban was connected to the inflammatory anti-Islam film 'The Innocence of Muslims,' which had been uploaded to YouTube, one of Google Inc.'s many subsidiaries."
Guiness logic (Score:4, Insightful)
Block another sub-business site from that same conglomerate business...
BRILLIANT!
Are they sure that alcohol is banned in Iran? It seems like a lot of the stuff must be consumed, given the nature of some of the plans...
Re:Guiness logic (Score:2, Insightful)
Lesson learned: if your product becomes sufficiently popular with sufficiently important people, it will become politically impossible to forcibly suppress it. Factor this into your business plan.
The Video Is a Piece of a Large Picture (Score:5, Insightful)
The video did not cause gmail to be blocked any more than the video caused terrorist attacks against US embassies.
The video did not cause a terrorist attack on the US embassies but you would have to agree it gave the people planning the attacks some really good cover from citizens that might have been unwilling under normal circumstances to storm United States embassies, right? The video was used in the attacks as a device. Likewise, you could call the video "the straw that broke the camel's back" or a bigger piece of the picture for Iran's blockage of Gmail but to say it played no role is purely speculation. Do you have an alternative theory or is it simply just a hunch? Do you speak Farsi? Are you situated in Tehran, roaming about and getting a feeling for the climate of the people? No? You're just sitting comfortably at your desk halfway across the world? So how do you know the video caused no unrest?
I mean, yes we joke that Iranian government is terribly inept, but would they really be so thick as to think blocking gmail had any meaningful impact on those who created/supported the video?
I thought the purpose was to punish Google for allowing the video to be uploaded at all (and it still remains in lengthy trailer format for most of the world's population to view). The government picked a length of time that they felt would cause an exodus of users from Gmail to another provider -- hopefully a local one that dishes up information without resistance to the Iranian government. More importantly, one that is not associated as the web host of "Innocence of Muslims" trailers.
The video is just serving as a gigantic red herring. More likely Iran had a real purpose behind the brief blockade, and throwing "The Video" out there as a reason is an attempt to distract from that reason.
Then what was it? Sure, relations with the US are strained. Sure, their currency just hit an all-time low against the dollar [bbc.co.uk]. But calling this a "red herring" requires you to tell us what the real purpose was. Otherwise there's a pretty simple cause and effect in my mind: Google still lets Americans watch movie trailer so therefore Iran government gives its citizens a reason not to use Google services. What is so abnormal about that logic? It makes about as much sense as US does not like Iranian Government so US places trade embargoes on all of Iranian goods, companies and services.