Google, Bing and other U.S software giants freed from Treasury restrictions
10th March 2010 by William Hobson
Online marketing will be able to expand in several regions as a new ruling frees US software companies from trade restrictions, opening new platforms for PPC ads in several countries.
Yesterday, the U.S Treasury Department relaxed sanctions on software exports to Cuba, Iran and Sudan. This change in policy will allow companies such as Google or Microsoft to offer instant messaging, email and social networking services to markets previously prohibited by legislature.
The Treasury department said that the decision was intended help people “exercise their most basic rights” via online communication tools. Only publicly available no-cost software will qualify for export, with the new regulations making provisions for “instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing and blogging” as well as the exportation of web-hosting services.
Although Google has been able to offer search – and the attached search engine marketing - to some of these markets in the past, trade restrictions on communication tools meant that the company couldn’t augment its AdWords and AdSense platforms with the same user data as it uses in the rest of the world.
Making these tools available to the Sudanese, Cuban and Iranian people will also have the added benefit of increasing their online activity.
Frank Jordan of The Associated Press, reports that Bob Boorstin, director of corporate and policy communications at Google, has welcomed the decision.
“This is a great accomplishment” he told a human rights meeting in Geneva. “We are hopeful this will help people like yourselves in this room and activists all over the world take a small step down what is certainly a long road ahead.”
However, the Sudanese government has downplayed the significance of the movie. The state-run Sudan News Agency has reported a spokesman for the African nation’s Ministry of Foreign affairs as belittling “the effect of the step” and that the government will only accept “full and unconditional lifting of the economic sanctions and the restrictions that were imposed by the US administration on Sudan.”
Google’s enthusiasm has also sparked criticism, raising the question of its dedication to human rights and free-speech. This issue has been on the agenda since January’s announcements over the company’s involvement in China, which provoked a maelstrom of media attention. Earlier this year, the company threated to cease operations in the world’s largest internet audience, saying that it would no longer censor results according to the government’s wishes.
However, months later and despite hostile statements from the Chinese government, Google.cn is still in operation and reportedly results for searches on terms like ‘Tianamen square”, “democracy” and “human rights” are still censored.
“If and when we pull out of China and turn off Google.cn, I’m afraid that we will be taking away from the Chinese populace a tool that they have come to value” said Boorstin.
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