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Trip Report: Google and YouTube in Iraq
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Earlier this month, a small team from Google and YouTube spent a week in Iraq on a trip arranged by the Department of Defense’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (
TFBSO
). Our goals were to explore opportunities for Google in Iraq, to understand the landscape of Internet access and connectivity in the country during this critical transition period, and to bring top-voted questions from YouTube to Iraqi leaders in a series of interviews. We met with students, private sector companies, NGOs and Iraqi leadership in the Kurdish city of Erbil in the north, and in Baghdad.
Pictures taken by the Google/YouTube team in Iraq: Harry Wingo (Policy), Carrie Farrell (Google.org), Debu Purkayastha (Corp Dev), Olivia Ma (YouTube), Mary Himinkool (Business Development), and Steve Grove (YouTube).
Regardless of your feelings about the Iraq War, it’s immediately evident upon arrival just how completely the country missed the Internet boom during Saddam Hussein’s regime. Internet penetration rates in Iraq are among the lowest in the Middle East—somewhere between one and eight percent. Only 15 percent of Iraqis say they use the web, and the largest percentage of them live in Baghdad. There are no commercial data centers in Iraq and much more fiber connectivity is needed to meet consumer needs. Most connections are via satellite, and those who do have connections pay dearly for it—we heard estimates of up to $150 U.S. dollars per month for a 512kb connection. To incentivize and enable private companies to lay more fiber in Iraq, a complex set of roadblocks must be addressed—from security concerns to regulatory frameworks to licensing structures. As the country is still struggling to form a government more than seven months after its last election, much of this progress has been stalled.
There are signs of progress, however. Mobile penetration has skyrocketed in Iraq in the past seven years, from effectively zero percent in 2003 to over 70% today. And the Iraqi people are highly educated. We met with dozens of computer science students at Salahaddin University in Erbil and at Baghdad University, and though they lack equipment and resources, they’re highly motivated to innovate and believe the web is a critical component of their economy’s future.
Many young people in Iraq and around the world
submitted questions
in Arabic and English for three interviews we conducted in partnership with Middle Eastern news agency
Al Arabiya
. Google Translate enabled anyone to vote on their favorite questions regardless of language, and we brought the top five questions to current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil, Dr. Barham Salih, and Iraqi politician and once the interim Prime Minister of Iraq, Ayad Allawi. Here is the television special that Al Arabiya produced showcasing their answers:
The Iraqis we met consistently expressed their desire for increased access to the web and for more access to content and tools in both Kurdish and Arabic. We believe access to information and high-speed connectivity to the cloud will be key to the future of the country. The power of the web to change people’s lives grows the further one gets from Silicon Valley, and we look forward to continuing our work with companies, governments and citizens in Iraq and other countries in transition.
Mary Himinkool, New Business Development, and Olivia Ma, YouTube News & Politics, recently watched "
Voices: Conversation Between Iraqi and American Students
."
Your questions on the future of Iraq
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
There is perhaps no other country in the world that has undergone more change or been under more scrutiny in the past decade than Iraq. The draw-down of U.S. troops and a recent election that has yet to produce a formal government have left Iraq in a state of flux. The country’s destiny has implications not just for the Arab world, but for the world at large.
That’s why, in partnership with the Arabic-language television network,
Al Arabiya
, we’re launching “Iraq Looks Forward,” a series of interviews on YouTube in which Iraqi leaders answer your questions about the future of the country. This is your chance to engage directly with top Iraqi officials, so visit
youtube.com/alarabiya
to submit your questions and vote on which you think should be asked.
A selection of the top-voted questions will be posted to sitting Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, Barham Salih, and others.
The deadline for submitting questions is Monday, September 27.
Olivia Ma, News Manager, recently watched “
Tony Blair on Iraq and Iran - The View
”
Update: Former sitting Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has also confirmed his participation in this interview series.
Iraqi Voices: Voter Perspectives on Election Day
Monday, March 8, 2010
On Sunday, despite as many as 100 bomb blasts throughout the country, according to
news reports
, Iraqi citizens flocked to the polls in higher-than-expected numbers to vote in the first nationwide parliamentary election since 2005. Amidst 38 confirmed casualties, Iraqi citizens from 18 different provinces inside Iraq -- as well as 16 other countries around the world -- cast their ballots to determine who will fill the Prime Minister's office and 325 seats in the nation's parliament.
What is it like to be an Iraqi citizen during this important and volatile time in the nation's history? We partnered with
Al Jazeera English
to find out, by collecting opinions directly from Iraqi voters on video in our "Iraqi Voices" project. The footage is still coming in as the votes are counted, but you can go to Al-Jazeera's YouTube Channel to see the
playlist
of content uploaded to YouTube so far. (If you'd like to put things in perspective, you can compare these clips to the ones we collected from American voters during the 2008 election in our
Video Your Vote
platform with PBS.)
One Iraqi got to the polls at 5 a.m. only to find out that his name was not on the list:
This video documents the actual voting experience in Iraq:
And this woman explains why she will not vote in this year's election:
If you're from Iraq or have thoughts about the Iraqi elections, upload your videos to the Al-Jazeera website (
http://interactive.aljazeera.net/iraqelections
) using
YouTube Direct
and your video might be shown on television.
Olivia Ma, News & Politics Manager, recently watched "
التصويت الخاص للجيش (محمد الصالح
" (with subtitles)
Iraqi Government on YouTube
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Governments, heads of state, and leaders from around the world are on YouTube, including
the Pope
, the
Royal Famil
y, and
Queen Rania
, and presidents from the
United States
to
France
,
South Korea
to
Estonia
. Today we're especially pleased to announce that the Iraqi Government has launched a dedicated YouTube channel, at
youtube.com/iraqigov
. Learn more from Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki:
Earlier this year, I visited Baghdad as a guest of the U.S. State Department to engage in conversations about the role of technology in Iraq. In discussions with elected officials, private companies and NGOs, I routinely heard the desire to connect with fellow citizens, Iraqis outside the country's borders, and cultures across the world. But it wasn't just the Iraqi Government who expressed an interest in YouTube — I was pleasantly surprised by the high level of awareness from a wide variety of Iraqis. One young student told us she uses YouTube to understand what is really happening in her country based on the variety of opinions, citizen journalism and news reports uploaded to the site. There was little difference between her examples and those we often hear in other countries, which speaks to both the global community on YouTube and the universality of the video experience.
Just this past week, our CEO Eric Schmidt traveled to Iraq to meet with government officials there about the challenge and opportunities they face. While in Iraq, Eric shot this video for
Citizentube
:
We hope that by launching on YouTube, the Iraqi Government and their citizens will also find it easy to use YouTube to engage in such conversations, and bring their proceedings, policies and ideas to a larger audience around the world.
Hunter Walk, Director of Product Management
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