Send Mubarak a message with Google's phone-a-tweet

NEVER LET the opportunity of a crisis pass you by and so Google is using the Egyptian revolution to promote the Saynow phone service it bought last month.

Dressed up as a philanthropic gesture to the oppressed people of the president Hosni Mubarak regime Google's blog post about its #egypt speak-to-tweet service refers to SayNow.

While the Internet deprived population of the world's oldest advanced civilisation may appreciate a way of phoning in a tweet and making a call to listen to people's gibberish up to a maximum of 140 characters, they probably have more pressing matters like protecting their homes from looters.

Google says, "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," and the fantastic boost in brand awareness Saynow is going to get no doubt.

Google probably thinks this is a way of improving its image after the debacle of its compliance and then non-compliance with the wishes of the one party totalitarian regime that is the People's Republic of China.

As Google decides to do a Team America, Mubarak, whose days as president are surely numbered, maybe feeling werry werry ronery at the moment but is also werry busy and he probably has some choice words for opposition leader Mohamed El Baradei, beginning with F.

Google says the speak-a-tweet service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt but its not obvious looking at the twitter feed for that tag that huge numbers of people are using it.

One imagines that as there is not a single Internet service provider now operating in Egypt it's a bit hard for anyone there to find out about the telephone service anyway.

But not wanting to let an opportunity for the people of Egypt to be ruled by international capitalism instead of a national dictator go by, here are the SayNow promotional phone numbers +16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855.

Be warned when The INQUIRER tried to call them only +97316199855 worked. µ