Iran to block GMail- launch their own Webmail service?

Wall Street Journal is reporting that in an attempt to thwart residents from trying to join anti-government protests, Iran’s telecommunication agency has decided to permanently suspend Gmail service throughout the country. In its place, Iran will push a national email service for Iranian citizens.

“Iran’s telecommunications agency announced what it described as a permanent suspension of Google Inc.’s email services, saying instead that a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out. It wasn’t clear late Wednesday what effect the order had on Google’s email services in Iran.”

Google has yet to respond on this but remember their CEO saying in an interview that data for anyone using their services can be made available to the authorities?

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