Google Executive Emerges as Key Figure in Revolt | Hacker News Reader

Google Executive Emerges as Key Figure in Revolt

online.wsj.com

43 pointsHardyLeung15 comments

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Mr. Ghonim actions are both brave and impressive. His connection to Google seems mostly coincidental though.

The fact that Mr. Ghonim and eight of his friends were arrested for their online statements should scare us all.

Wael Ghonim Scheduled Release Monday:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870398950457612...

A Feather in Google's Hat! Maybe Google should honour him in some way.

Imagine when the next time around Google couldn't find a hero. Perhaps Microsoft will? There will be an endless race to finding a hero for the revolutions.

Bad idea all around, a slippery-slope no less.

Down vote with qualification. I spent time writing my thoughts, you spent your time downvoting with a click?

Exactly the kind of person you want running a tech company.

How does 'do no evil' reconcile with 'do tremendous good'?

Wael Ghonim just became notable enough for Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wael_Ghonim

about as 'key' as twitter I'm guessing...

Yeah, I wonder how much the online element of these revolutions is overblown by the western media. Tunisia is credited to WikiLeaks, Iran was "the Twitter revolution", and this is being credited to facebook. I'd love to know how central a role they're actually playing, or if it's just something for the media to latch on to.

I keep seeing conflicting information about this, but my impression is that the rise of independent television (Al Jazeera) has had the deeper impact so far.

Edit: does anyone here know whether Al Jazeera has typically been censored by states in the region? I mean, of course, before the recent revolts. If not, why not? It seems obvious that a population with random access to independent news media is highly undesirable if you're their dictator.

The only way to censor unencrypted satellite channels is to either ban the dishes for your own citizens, or go to a foreign country with lots of guns and persuade them to stop broadcasting. Neither is a very attractive proposition.

Regimes like the taliban and saddam hussein's iraq do ban dishes, along with almost everything else.

"Yes, we may have helped Tunisia, Egypt. But let us not forget the elephant in the room: Al Jazeera + sat dishes" - http://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/31448923629420544

I can't help but note the underhanded self-praise in this statement. It's quite typical, unfortunately.

Several after-the-fact analyses of the Iranian "Twitter Revolution" concluded that it had minimal, if any, impact. Most of the tweets were retweets or were tweets by supporters, but almost none of the tweets were actually from within Iran.

http://www.webecologyproject.org/2009/06/iran-election-on-tw...

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/06/evalua...

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2009/tc200...

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