After thousands, or - according to Ahmadinejad's deputy information minister - hundreds of thousands of Internet websites were filtered for violating religious or moral codes, yesterday, the Google search engine was filtered by dozens of ISP providers across Iran. Various reports published in active Iranian weblogs and websites indicated that Google was filtered, while other websites reported that Blogfa, a Farsi weblog provider, was also filtered.

The scope of Internet censorship has been expanding in Iran ever since the medium was introduced to the country. Restrictions were intensified particularly after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as they did in other areas, such as those relating to social activism and free speech. Government officials periodically announce the introduction of a new method or technology to filter websites. The Ahmadinejad Administration also expanded the list of filtered websites, adding Google to the mix in its latest measure. Currently, Internet users in Iran's Internet café's are experiencing very slow connection speeds and limited access to information.

The filtering of Google has surprised many analysts, some of which initially speculated that the new restriction may have been unintentional or caused by an error. The filtering of Google, which is currently the world's most visited website, ushers a new era of Internet censorship in Iran.

Some experts argue that the filtering of Google is caused by the uniform method of filtering that is used by the government. The software, it is claimed, expands the scope of filtering without human interference by searching for filtered words and links. As such, it is possible for websites and weblogs that display prohibited words to be filtered, even if they are part of the Google network.

In the past few months, the ministry of information received hundreds of complains about filtering errors that were caused by the software. The complaints were left unanswered, and the website belonging to the government's own TAKFA (National Information and Communication Technology Agenda) was filtered.