Arabic offensive by Google
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Two weeks ago, Google launched an Arabic email service and this week they’ve launched Google Arabic News.
What’s happening?
Has the world’s fastest growing Internet business finally decided that Arab countries deserve attention?
Apparently, Google sees potential. Up until 6 months ago, you couldn’t contact anyone at Google to talk about the Arab market. Now, they’ve appointed a regional director who’s making comments about the Middle East & North Africa.
Dennis Woodside, Director Emerging Markets, EMEA is saying that “The launch of Google News in Arabic demonstrates Google’s commitment to bring localised products to users across the globe.”
As we all know, Google makes its money from advertising revenue and it would appear that the number of page views and clicks from Arab countries are lucrative enough to develop.
So, I’m not sure if we should be congratulating ourselves or if we should be concerned about the impact of Google’s Arabic-offensive on long-etsablished Arab online businesses like Maktoob (mainly an Arabic email, content and community service) and AlBawaba.com (mainly an Arabic news and community service).
We’ll be watching developments closely.
Everything Google does, it does fast. So, if it’s ‘going Arabic’, expect more services very soon.
Check out Google Arabic News.
4 comments June 16th, 2006
