ICANN participation

Google opened a regional office in Cairo last year and celebrated its official launching couple of weeks ago in Smart Village. Google has been focusing on emerging markets where there is yet a huge opportunity for growth in business and services. Nikesh Arora, President of Google in EMEA confirmed that “Google wanted to be more local in several markets especially the Arabic-speaking markets, with 300 million people speaking the same language”. Arora was also clear enough when he explained why Google has selected Egypt as a hub for the Middle East, saying “Egypt is a large marketplace. So, our decision to be in Egypt is based on being closest to consumers”. So, Google is targeting large, consumer base markets in the region like those in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia.

 Partnering with the Egyptian government, Google has offered 11 million students in Egypt free access to a suite of applications like Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. all with an Arabic interface. No one could criticize Google for being active and aggressive in extending its reach to markets all over the place. I would personally say that Google has succeeded in few years to make a change in the Internet at many fronts, and to become the start page of hundreds of thousands of users around the world. I hate though to see Google targeting the consumer market in Egypt only for selling products and getting more revenues from online ads. I wish to see Google bringing more value to the market and utilizing the local expertise to develop and deliver tools and services that the Internet users in the Arab world can benefit from.