Yahoo! will soon speak Arabic

Posted August 25th, 2009 at 1:36 am by Keith Nilsson, Emerging Markets

 22 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

This morning in Dubai, Yahoo! begins learning a new language – Arabic. We’ve just announced our intent to acquire Maktoob.com, the leading online community in the Arab world. To put this in perspective, Maktoob reaches one in every three people online throughout the region –- or 16.5 million people. This will be Yahoo!’s biggest geographic expansion in years.

This deal is part of Yahoo!’s broader strategy to grow our international business, particularly in emerging markets. In many countries, vast populations — and advertisers — are just starting to come online. The potential is tremendous. Yahoo! has a large and growing audience in these markets today, and our acquisition of Maktoob represents the kind of investment we’re making to cater to the needs of these promising regions.

We plan to join forces with the Maktoob team, the strongest in the region, to create locally relevant content, services, and programming. That’s no easy task when you consider the differences between countries like UAE, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But we’re committed to literally translating our winning formula for this growing market in many ways, including through locally-based editorial teams.

Initially, we’ll plan to introduce Arabic versions of Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, Search, and our homepage and then eventually local versions of properties like News, Sports, and Finance. We’ll also focus on creating content and services tailored to the region. No other global company has made this kind of investment in local relevance for the Arab world.

Arabs are vastly underserved by today’s Internet offerings. The World Bank estimates that there are 320 million Arabic speakers around the globe, yet less than one per cent of online content is written in their language (despite a vibrant Arabic blogosphere). We have a big opportunity to meet this growing demand, and we think Yahoo!, building on Maktoob’s local expertise, brings the scale and heft to draw many more people online in the region –- and we plan to give them compelling reasons to log on.

We also recognize the Middle East is deeply complex, a complexity mirrored in the online world, and that it will present certain challenges. As an Internet pioneer in the emerging markets, we’ve learned important lessons and we’re committed to responsible global engagement. This means being sensitive to local laws, customs, and norms while also protecting and promoting the rights of our users. We believe our engagement in the Middle East can be a positive force for people by increasing access to information, supporting a thriving marketplace for the exchange of ideas, and bridging local, regional, and international communities.

It’s easy to forget the fastest growing Internet audiences are in the emerging markets. That’s not lost on us. We’re passionate about growing our presence in places like Southeast Asia, India, Latin America, and Africa. And we can’t wait to yodel in the Middle East.

In an effort to keep things brief here on Yodel, we have provided a link to the press release and we have also created an informational site that should answer many of your questions.

Keith Nilsson
Senior Vice President, Emerging Markets

Tagged: acquisition, emerging markets, news

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22 Comments Add your own

Mahmoud Al Ramamneh | August 25th, 2009 at 2:16 am

what a wonderful news !!
Maktoob is going to be better and better ..

How Can I Be Lost | August 25th, 2009 at 2:16 am

Yahoo boring website acquired another more boring website, this should be a very good news to Maktoob, actually if Yahoo offered 1 million they would sell !

Kayed Qunibi | August 25th, 2009 at 2:46 am

im soo excited :).

makki | August 25th, 2009 at 3:22 am

great deal.. maktoob was my first e-mail..

mz21 | August 25th, 2009 at 3:40 am

nice :)
millions of arabs are waiting :) ..

aboanas93 | August 25th, 2009 at 6:57 am

WoW !!!

THATs Very CooL

YAHOO + MAKTOOB = YAHOO IN ARABIC.

ghanou | August 25th, 2009 at 7:08 am

its good for maktoob … Congratulation :)

a faqih | August 25th, 2009 at 7:29 am

please dont called the new company Jabbar because the god name al jabbar

becsaad | August 25th, 2009 at 11:06 am

We wish you success

Smarketer | August 25th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

This is a most awaited and exciting news for us in Middle East. Yahoo Search Marketing currently doesn’t provide anything specific to ME market (geo country-targeting), hopefully we going to have more choice with more wider audience reach in Arab Audience.

Great stuff!

@smarketer

gag | August 25th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

after going through Maktoob.com i am but impressed by the work that has gone into creating such an amazing portal
i think sentiment reader is innovative, cool and trendsetting
i absolutely love the map in the news section, its way too cool
polls n calendar feature is fabulous
sections are beautifully designed for quick and complete read
their are lot other cool features which makes this portal a way too cool investment by yahoo!
thank you, i have bookmarked this destination for my daily read

well for a sensational region we can now expect a titillating online destination, yahoo!

qatar world | August 26th, 2009 at 9:55 am

awesome .. good luck for all

basheer | August 26th, 2009 at 11:27 am

its good for yahoo … Congratulation :)

gexly | August 27th, 2009 at 12:19 pm

Really nice deal! Suppose Maktoob will become better

haitham | August 27th, 2009 at 6:54 pm

please arabic

Amy B. | August 28th, 2009 at 12:37 am

I’m very happy that Yahoo! will also talk Arabic.

But will Yahoo! talk Romanian, too?

Anti_uSa | August 29th, 2009 at 10:15 am

its bad idea.i live,,love maktoob as maktoob..its the 1st thing cool ever made by arab on the net. and now its sold.so sad:(

King | September 8th, 2009 at 11:16 am

At last
we hope they’re up to the challenge and do it Right

Beth | October 9th, 2009 at 6:43 am

Great innovation for Yahoo! Keep it up. :)

ferd | October 9th, 2009 at 8:22 am

Maybe Yahoo should learn to speak Farsi and apologize to the Iranian citizens it betrayed.

ferd | October 9th, 2009 at 8:22 am

Oh my comment is going to be moderated. Keep censoring Yahoo, keep censoring.

Nicki Dugan | October 9th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

@ferd: No censorship here. Thanks for your patience as we manage the comments moderation queue. You may have seen by now that ZDNet revisited their blog post and concluded that their source was unreliable. The allegations are, in fact, false. In addition to responding to ZDNet directly, communicating with folks on Twitter, we’ve also published this post on the situation:http://ycorpblog.com/2009/10/09/no-yahoo-meeting-in-iran/. Thanks for stopping by.