Google and Tweet - bypassing the internet

[Lamplighter]

Google Blog
Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard.

Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt
and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground.
Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service
—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.

We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow,
a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality.
It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail
on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855)
and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt.
No Internet connection is required.
People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.

We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time.
Our thoughts are with everyone there

[Lamplighter]

CNN
Google Exec Reported Missing in Egypt

Google's head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa has been missing in Egypt since last week, according to multiple news outlets.

Wael Ghonim, who has headed the company's marketing in the region since January 2010 , has not been seen for several days as protests continue to swell in Egypt, according to the Los Angeles Times.
<snip>
According to the Times, Ghonim posted several messages on his Twitter account that indicated he was participating in the protests. Among the messages:
<snip>

The Times reports that Ghonim was a guest speaker at an Al Jazeera forum in Januray and that the news agency had been contacted by Ghonim's family and friends.

"His wife is appealing for any information on his whereabouts," said an Al Jazeera blog post on its English website.

[Lamplighter]

I posted these 2 news items because I hold the Google enterprises in such high regard;
BUT, it is looking as though Google is beginning to participate in
governmental affairs beyond it's traditional role on the internet