Over Half of Google’s Business Services Are Inaccessible in Iran

A recent study shows that out of Google’s 27 marketing and business services only 44 percent are accessible in Iran.

Many might assume that Iranians are limited by their own government when it comes to accessing Internet-based services. But a recent study shows that in many cases, it’s actually the policies of the US government which burdens Iranian citizens from using services offered by American companies.

According to Abolhassan Firouzabadi, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, a recent study shows that of the 227 services provided by Google, only 54 percent is accessible to Iranians. Currently, Google Developers, a website which provides software development tools and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is not accessible to the people of Iran. Google offers 51 APIs, but Iranians are not able to have a direct access to these services, according to Firouzabadi, reported by Mehr News.

Of the 39 personal and optimization services by Google, 85 percent are available to Iranians, while for the 16 OS and network services only 37 percent are accessible in Iran. Most importantly, this study shows that of Google’s 27 marketing and business services only 44 percent are accessible in Iran. Google also offers 13 analytical services, which only 62 percent of them are available to Iranian users. Firouzabadi also mentioned the business services by Amazon, which 90 percent of them are inaccessible in Iran.

A few weeks ago Google Play removed Snapp and Tap30, two of the most popular Iranian ride-sharing apps from its store. Although Iranians prefer to use unofficial Iranian Android markets because of the ease of use and localization, this issue has brought uncertainty and concerns for Iranian developers. Prior to this incident, a number of Iranian websites lost their access to Google Analytics, a service by Google which tracks and reports website traffic. This issue was caused by “a violation of Analytics policies” as Google’s support team has answered to Iranian webmasters.

Apple also took the same approach a couple of weeks before Google. Last month, Apple pulled some of the Iranian apps from its store and rejected updates from them. Since then, Iranian developers have been using unofficial app stores for their iOS users.

Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi, Iran’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology had previously stated that he will follow up these recent issues with the help of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.