Google chief hails executive who helped lead Egypt uprising
By DPA, IANSTuesday, February 15, 2011
BARCELONA - Google’s chief executive has praised a Middle Eastern executive of the US company, Wael Ghonim, for helping to organise the popular uprising that led Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to resign last week.
“We are very proud of what Wael and that group was able to do in Egypt. They were able to use a set of technology that included Facebook and Twitter and a number of others to really express the voice of the people,” Google chief Eric Schmidt told an audience Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress trade expo in Barcelona.
A Facebook page set up by Ghonim, a Gulf-based head of marketing for Google, called for the protests against Mubarak Jan 25. When Ghonim entered Egypt and led demonstrations there, he was detained and held for 12 days in police custody.
Schmidt said that “collaboration technology” on the internet “does change the power dynamic between government and citizens in some very interesting and unpredictable ways”.
