As US sanctions against the Islamic Republic increase, Yahoo and Microsoft have removed iran from the country lists for their webmail services. You’ll still find Iran as an option for Google Gmail, though.
With more pressure from US administration on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, there’s a lot of tension between the two countries right now, and this makes it more difficult for companies like Yahoo and Microsoft to comply with the restrictions being brought forth by Iran, and in compliance with the US sanctions they can no longer operate in Iran.
The details of these constrained business practices were not disclosed, but Google has said that the sanctions don’t keep it from including Iran in its country list and insists on its own compliance with US sanctions. This is all in addition of the fact that Iran is pretty vigilant in regulating Internet access for certain websites like, Facebook, already.
So why have Yahoo and Microsoft removed themselves from Iran while Google remains? Considering the amount of trouble Yahoo got into with the government in the past week, it’s not surprising that it’s taken the sanctions seriously. And any avoidance of stressing the already tense situation may be due cause for Microsoft’s light treading as well.
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