2011-02-06 UPDATE: Google Goes Rebel, Supports Egyptian Protest

Twitter has been something of a lifeline for the Egyptian people in this time of struggle. It has been a major conduit for getting up to the minute information out of Egypt and it has allowed the Egyptian protesters to communicate and organize.

So when Hosni Mubarak pulled the plug in on the Internet last week in an effort to quell the dissent, the people at Google decided it was time to take their latest speech-to-text technology out of Google Labs and into the real world. They got together with Twitter and set up three phone lines that Egyptians could call and leave a voicemail that would be turned into a Tweet. The numbers, which went into service on Monday, are +16504194196, +390662207294 and +97316199855 and they have been advertised in Al Jazeera's ticker since. The tinker doesn't mention Google BTW.

Google quietly reported this in their official blog:

Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground. Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.

We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.

We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there.

In a presumably unrelated development, Google's head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa has gone missing after joining protests against the Egyptian government on Friday. A Google employee at a protest sounds pretty par for the course to me. I remember that an anti-Bush demonstration at Santa Monica Airport in August 2004 just around the corner from Google's Santa Monica location pretty much cleared out the office. I ran into a friend that worked at Google at the protest and after it was over he took me back to the office and treated me to one of their free Pepsi's. On this missing Google employee The Wall Street Journal reports:

A Google spokesman said: “We care deeply about the safety of our employees.”

Wael Ghonim’s web postings suggest a deepening engagement with politics. His Facebook page lists opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei as a person he admires, along with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs. In mid-January he tweeted that he was traveling to Qatar to participate at an Internet freedom forum hosted by network Al Jazeera.

Later, he sent a tweet that said he was going to join the Egyptian protests despite “all the warnings I got from my relative and friends.”

On Jan. 26 after Egypt clamped down on Twitter, Wael sent a tweet that was recirculated by colleagues, friends and strangers: “A government that is scared from Facebook and Twitter should govern a city in Farmville but not a country like Egypt,” he said, referring to the Farmville Internet game by Zynga Game Network Inc.

On Friday, he tweeted: “Very worried as it seems that government is planning a war crime tomorrow against people. We are all ready to die.”

As I write this automatic weapons fire is being heard in Tahrir Square and Al Jazeera is reporting a mounting death toll among the protesters. I fear for Wael Ghonim and all those in the square. I hope he can get to a phone and tweet us real soon.

UPDATE: Wael Ghonim has been released on Monday after being held for 12 days by Egyptian police. Here is an interview he did with Al Jazeera