Iran to replace Google with ‘Oh Lord’ It all began in the early 1990’s with Internet search engine startups like Excite, Galaxy, Lycos and Webcrawler. Then Yahoo and Alta Vista moved in, followed only a few years later by what would become the neighborhood bully: Google. Now Iran would like to introduce the new kid on the block... Ladies and Gentelmen, please welcome ‘Oh Lord,’ a homegrown Iranian search engine sure to highlight very high resolution photos of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the regretful testimony of green movement opposition activists.
Hadi Malek-Parast, Director General for Research and Development at the Iranian Information Technology Company, told the Iranian Mehr News Agency on Sunday that Iran has started developing a national search enginged dubbed ‘Ya Haq’, a Persian expression meaning “Oh Lord.” “The problem,” Ziaie said,” is that the infrastructure, knowledge and technicians are all not there to do this properly, at least not for the next few years.” Turkey tests new means of Internet control. Many governments are unhappy about Google, Yahoo and Microsoft: those are too big to bully. It's much easier to bully local search engines and email providers: they are usually too timid to complain and they have much more too lose (that's why the fact that more and more Chinese netizens seem to be drifting towards local versions of Web2.0 services - a trend spotted by Michael Anti and others - is a little bit disturbing).
But let's face it: it's very hard to beat Google at search, email and a gazillion other services that they offer. The Turkish leaders seem to believe otherwise: Tayfun Acarer, chairman of Turkey's Information Technologies and Communication Board (BTK), said that Turkish engineers are working on a Turkish search engine that is to launch in 2010. They expect it to be popular not just in Turkey but elsewhere in the Muslim world - Acarer says he is confident that "these other countries will trust our search engine". Why would other countries want to use such an invention? Does the Internet Favor Dictators or Dissenters? Is CYXYMU the first "digital refugee" The blogosphere is about to explode with buzz about CYXYMU, a Georgian blogger writing predominantly in Russian, who may have been the real target of cyber-attacks that made Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal inaccessible on August 06, 2009 (ominously close to the anniversary of the Russian-Georgian war of the last year).
I won't lie: I am happy we are finally beginning to address this issue. CYXYMU's problems - which have plagued his blogging for more than a year now - have turned him into the first "digital refugee", perhaps, the best term to describe his tireless forced migration between various blogging sites to ensure that his message gets heard. I have been calling attention to CYXYMU's problems for months now, and this brought no results.
Here's me in February 2009 in Project Syndicate Whenever manipulation efforts fail, cyber-attacks offer yet another powerful tool to crack down on dissent without triggering public accusations of formal censorship. Cyberattack on Google Said to Hit Password System.