Iran has blocked Google search engine and Gmail over the company�s refusal to remove the anti-Islam movie that insults Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) from You Tube service.

Abdolsamad Khoramabadi, Iranian official with the state-run body in charge of online censorship and computer crimes, said on Sunday that Google and Gmail would be blocked until further notice because of the repeated requests of people.

Although over the past few�days Iranian users were encouraged to boycott Google search engine on September 24 and 25 in protest to the circulation of the offensive movie in the You Tube, which is one of the services provided by Google Inc., there was no request for blocking the services.

The anti-Islam move, Innocence of Muslims, was produced by an Israeli-American called Sam Bacile and started circulating on the You Tube earlier in September. It has led to widespread protests and fury in the Muslim nations all over the world.

This is while almost all Iranian internet users, businessmen, students and ordinary people, depend on Google and Gmail services to conduct different tasks and such a ban would severely disrupt their activities.

The decision to filter Google and Gmail has coincided with government plans to launch the initial phases of a national internet, a countrywide network aimed at substituting services run through the world wide web.