Region | Iran
Iran regime caught in world wide web
In the latest related development in this regard, Google, the internet giant, has denied reports of being pressured to change its doodle to reflect Iran's demonstrations.
- By Jumana Al Tamimi, Associate Editor
- Published: 18:24 June 24, 2009
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Dubai: It is a two-way street. Both modern technology and Iran's unrest have used each other for free publicity. But not out of political motivation.
In the latest related development in this regard, Google, the internet giant, has denied reports of being pressured to change its doodle to reflect Iran's demonstrations.
"We don't preannounce or confirm upcoming doodles," a Google spokesperson said.
Click here for link to Google map on Iran protests
"The doodle selection process aims to celebrate interesting events and anniversaries around the world that reflect Google's personality and love of innovation," the spokesperson told Gulf News.
Google usually posts a doodle of its name to match with certain events and anniversaries, such as the US Independence Day, Earth Day, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving Day, Halloween, anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr., and Chinese New Year. The new Persian year on March 21 was also among the events.
Earlier, some press reports hinted at the possibility of changing Google's doodle to reflect the ongoing riots in Iran, which provided a great favour for new technology, namely internet.
"Iran's protests also serve as a free advertisement for twitter, cell phones, and the internet. Even now there is a push to change Google's logo to reflect Iran's demonstrators," wrote Dallas Darling in an article posted on Worldnews.com.
Language tool
Earlier, Google released a tool that will translate Farsi into English and vice-versa, amid unexpected massive flow of information from Iran to demonstrations there through the internet, or what is being dubbed as "electronic empire".
Facebook, the world's biggest social networking site, has also announced the launch of an Iranian version, while demonstrations have concerned the West, and Iran has accused those countries of interfering in its internal affairs.
But both Google and Facebook stressed that their plans are not politically motivated — a position that has been reiterated by a Google spokesperson.
"Google's mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," said the spokesperson.
"Our recent effort to launch a Persian to/from English translation tool directly addresses our mission to increase access to global information."
Farsi will be the 42nd language provided by Google. Already information on the internet giant are provided in 41 languages. They include Arabic, Spanish, Albanian, Chinese, German and French.
Including Farsi "it's one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world and vice-versa", Google's principal scientist, Franz Och, was quoted as saying in an interview with BBC.
Translation of news between English and Farsi will be done through "using machine translation, which in general is not as good as human translation and so, for some languages, the quality is mixed," Och added.
Yet the language barrier between Iranians and the rest of the world will be removed, company officials said.
Meanwhile, some reports noted that social network Twitter's investors stand to "make millions of dollars from Iran's protesters."
Several reports on Twitter, Facebook, cell phones and how the new technology is being part of the developments in Iran were published in a myriad of media outlets.
In light of the government crackdown on journalists and media, and the insufficient media coverage of the demonstrations, the current unrest is historical in the sense that it was publicised through the internet.
In light of the crackdown on journalists and media… the current unrest is historical in the sense that it was publicised through the internet.
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