Iran blocks Gmail permanently for citizens

Google has said it has seen a drop in traffic today after Iran announced it was blocking its citizen's access to Gmail.

Iran's telecommunications provider announced today that Gmail would be permanently blocked and a national email system would be rolled out shortly, according to the Wall Street Journal. It quotes a local official as saying the move was designed to boost local internet firms and build trust between the government and the people.

A Google spokesman said in a statement, "We have heard from users in Iran that they are having trouble accessing Gmail. We can confirm a sharp drop in traffic, and we have looked at our own networks and found that they are working properly.”

“Whenever we encounter blocks in our services we try to resolve them as quickly as possibly because we strongly believe that people everywhere should have the ability to communicate freely online."

The Iranian government has been focusing more attention on the internet since protests erupted last June over alleged vote tampering. Protesters used services like Twitter to coordinate and share information, and the pro-government forces responded with denial of service attacks, including later against Twitter itself.

Twitter has been outspoken in its opposition to censorship Evan Williams used the World Economic Forum in Davos to commit to making Twitter difficult to censor. The company also delayed a planned upgrade during the June protests to make sure the service stayed up for the demonstrators.