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Iran launches new domestic Internet search engine

Society Materials 15 February 2015 12:50 (UTC +04:00)
Iran unveiled a new domestic Internet search engine during a ceremony attended by the country’s Communications and Information Technology Minister Mahmoud Vaezi.
Iran launches new domestic Internet search engine

Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 15

By Umid Niayesh - Trend:

Iran unveiled a new domestic Internet search engine during a ceremony attended by the country's Communications and Information Technology Minister Mahmoud Vaezi.

The search engine dubbed Yooz.ir was developed with support of Information Technology Organization of Iran, the country's official IRIB news agency reported Feb. 15.

The country has recently launched another domestic search engine named parsijoo.ir.

The issue of developing domestic search engines was raised for the first time in 2010 during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since then the government has been pursuing the ways to replace Western Internet search engines with its own homegrown version and increasing control over Iranians' access to the World Wide Web.

The new engines were expected to be operational by 2012 but encountered delays.

The Islamic Republic has also recently unveiled its first "smart filtering software" which is capable of accurate and rapid detecting "inappropriate" content (including text, image and video) online.

The new software is a step from the existing filtering system in Iran that blocks access to the whole website.

It should be noted that several of world's most popular networks, such as Twitter and Facebook are banned in Iran, while users are still able to access them via proxies. A proxy allows bypassing 'gates' meant to block certain sites.

A survey by Iranian Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports indicates that 69.3 percent of the country's young generation use proxy servers to by-pass the filters and access banned Internet websites.

Follow the author on Twitter: @UmidNiayesh

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