Google launches regional domains for Tunisia and Iraq

By Aemon Malone Published April 1, 2011

Google on Thursday launched the domains google.iq and google.tn provide regional, pertinent search results for the countries of Iraq and Tunisia respectively. Google had previously routed searches from Iraq and Tunisia through other countries. Now, an Iraqi searching for, say, a shoe store is more likely to find one that’s closer to his or her location. The two new additions mean that Google now has 184 local domains worldwide, with 15 of those in Arab countries.

” The new domains will help people in Iraq and Tunisia find locally relevant information, faster,” AbdelKarim Mardini, Google’s product manager for the Middle East & North Africa, said in a blog post. “For example, a search for [central bank] on the Iraq domain yields results relevant to someone in Iraq, such as the Central Bank of Iraq. On the other hand, the same search on the Tunisia domain returns slightly different results.”

Recommended Videos

With the new domains comes better support for each country’s languages. In Iraq, Google users can now search in Arabic and Kurdish. In Tunisia, Arabic and French are now supported.

Google.iq and google.tn bring Google closer to its stated goal of covering the world’s top 40 spoken languages and 99 percent of all Internet users. The company says it plans to launch more domains in “the coming months,” but didn’t hint at what countries it was focusing on for those launches.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Topics

Google

Computing

ChatGPT Search is here to battle both Google and Perplexity

The ChatGPT Search icon on the prompt window

ChatGPT is receiving its second new search feature of the week, the company announced on Thursday. Dubbed ChatGPT Search, this tool will deliver real-time data from the internet in response to your chat prompts.

ChatGPT Search appears to be both OpenAI's answer to Perplexity and a shot across Google's bow.

Computing

Ancient Mayan city discovered via page 16 of Google search results

Proceeding to even the second page of Google search results is rare enough, but going all the way to page 16 and then selecting an entry that leads to the discovery of a huge Mayan city that was lost for centuries under a jungle canopy ... well, that’s really something.

“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring,” Luke Auld-Thomas, a Ph.D. student at Tulane University in Louisiana, said in comments reported by the BBC.

Computing

Google expands its AI search function, incorporates ads into Overviews on mobile

A woman paints while talking on her Google Pixel 7 Pro.

Google announced on Thursday that it is "taking another big leap forward" with an expansive round of AI-empowered updates for Google Search and AI Overview.
Earlier in the year, Google incorporated generative AI technology into its existing Lens app, which allows users to identify objects within a photograph and search the web for more information on them, so that the app will return an AI Overview based on what it sees rather than a list of potentially relevant websites. At the I/O conference in May, Google promised to expand that capability to video clips.
With Thursday's update, "you can use Lens to search by taking a video, and asking questions about the moving objects that you see," Google's announcement reads. The company suggests that the app could be used to, for example, provide personalized information about specific fish at an aquarium simply by taking a video and asking your question.
Whether this works on more complex subjects like analyzing your favorite NFL team's previous play or fast-moving objects like identifying makes and models of cars in traffic, remains to be seen. If you want to try the feature for yourself, it's available globally (though only in English) through the iOS and Android Google App. Navigate to the Search Lab and enroll in the “AI Overviews and more” experiment to get access.

You won't necessarily have to type out your question either. Lens now supports voice questions, which allows you to simply speak your query as you take a picture (or capture a video clip) rather than fumbling across your touchscreen in a dimly lit room.
Your Lens-based shopping experience is also being updated. In addition to the links to visually similar products from retailers that Lens already provides, it will begin displaying "dramatically more helpful results," per the announcement. Those include reviews of the specific product you're looking at, price comparisons from across the web, and information on where to buy the item.