Wael Ghonim: The Most Inspiring Googler Who Helped Spark the Egyptian Revolution | Hacker News Reader

Wael Ghonim: The Most Inspiring Googler Who Helped Spark the Egyptian Revolution

thelede.blogs.nytimes.com

35 pointsemilepetrone17 comments

Why does the media keep repeating his employer's name? It has nothing to do with his activism.

Maybe starting a revolution was part of his 20% time?

Actually it does, in so far as people like him are likely to be very common in Google compared to other places.

I have a lot of respect for Google and perhaps I am just misunderstanding your point. Are you trying to say "People brave enough to face battalions of armed police while protesting against a totalitarian regime are very common in Google"?

I hope that is the case but it would be hard to provide objective proof of that.

I think there is another, better justification for naming Google in this story and that is - they risked acting against their self interest by creating the call-to-tweet tool for the protesters in Egypt. It used to be accepted practice for corporations to 'stay out' of foreign issues that don't directly impact them and Google had the cojones to side-step accepted practice in favor of what is right. Then again, Twitter and Facebook have taken similar actions in the past.

This is not to minimize the positive contributions these companies made, but it is not the same as facing armed police at great personal risk.

Lego cubicles and chair massages do not a revolution make.

He would not have made it into the media in the first place were it not for the Google angle.

Wow - the video shows a very inspiring guy - not because he is particularly charismatic, but rather because he seems humbled by his role. Clearly feels that he is playing a small part in a larger movement, and deeply patriotic.

Incredibly moving ending of Wael weeping as he sees photographs of some of the killed protesters for the first time. Truly sad and heartbreaking, yet highly inspirational moment. In the end, one can only hope the Egyptian people finally find the peace, freedom, and fairness they have been fighting so diligently for.

I would be interested to know how he failed to keep his anonymity when he claims he was anonymous yet Egyptian police arrested him.

Once he was arrested, I assume it made a lot of sense both for him and his family/friends to 'out' him(self) as a senior executive at Google. This may have even saved his life.

This assumes the Egyptian police hadn't already found out his identity from some other source before or after the arrest.

It's estimated that 10,000 people have been arrested. It's likely that most are still hidden away by the Interior Ministry.

The fact that we had a face for this guy, and a title, and a link to a major corporation (that then asked for his release, setup a hotline and email, etc), probably really helped in the fact that he only stayed for 12 days, was treated well and subsequently released?

I haven't yet seen any sign of Google reacting to all this news about him, positively or negatively. Have they?

The interview? or the fact that he was found (http://twitter.com/google/status/34676106900541440)?

Anything really. Thanks for the link. I'm curious as to whether Google will express any support (or non-support) for his pro-democracy activities. I can imagine them going either way on this. Most likely they'll say nothing.

Also, he wasn't, of course, "found". He was released in response to international attention after having been imprisoned and tortured by a dictator's thugs. (Being blindfolded for 12 days counts as torture in my book.)

Was it ever established how the Egyptian policed determined that he had started the Facebook page?

From what I understand, he admitted he did. http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/08/google-executive-wael-gho...

I'm asking how the police knew it was him before they grabbed him.

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