Arabic offensive by Google
June 16th, 2006 Zeid Nasser (Admin)
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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.
Entry Filed under: Online, Regional
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4 Comments Add your own
1. Gaith | June 17th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
yes, this will add pressure on regional portals such as maktoob and Albawaba,
most of the people I know use Google for searching, and they use also gmail, now with the introduction of gmail in Arabic we expect more users to break from maktoob to google.
As for offering news in Arabic , it is links to other website, which will increase the number of visitors to those websites features in Google Arabic news.
Check my blog:
http://www.maktoobblog.com/igaith
2. Hussain | June 23rd, 2006 at 12:37 am
Maktoob and Albawaba don’t have much unique content to begin with, that could be found elsewhere. They will probably go the way of Arabia.com and PlanetArabia.com
3. Ad Blog Arabia » Ad&hellip | August 8th, 2006 at 11:26 am
[...] The quote comes from this post by Zeid Nasser, which was also linked-to by many blogs in several languages. [...]
4. Ad Blog Arabia » Go&hellip | February 18th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
[...] Last year, AdBlogArabia reported that Google had started an ‘Arabic offensive’ with Arabic News. It seemed then that there were long term plans to seize significant shares in this growing market. [...]
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