Google – StartUpArabia

AdMob To Be Acquired By Google For $750 Million In Stock

November 10, 2009November 10, 2009 MMM 2 Comments

Just a few hours earlier, it was announced that a definitive agreement was signed for mobile advertising network AdMob to be acquired by Google for $750 Million in stock.

AdMob was founded in January 2006 by Lebanese entrepreneur Omar Hamoui, as a mobile advertising marketplace, offering solutions for discovery, branding and monetization on the mobile web. It was able to attract investments from Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, DFJ Growth Fund and Northgate Capital.

The company grew to take a lead in display advertising on smartphone platforms, such as Apple’s iPhone OS and Google’s Android, working with thousands of advertisers to serve mobile ads on their publisher network of over 15,000 websites and mobile applications. AdMob received 10.2 billion total ad requests in September of this year, and has served more than 125 billion mobile ads since its inception.

With this deal Google aims to strengthen their push into mobile advertising, complementing the solutions they already have, and roll out more effective tools for creating, serving and analyzing emerging mobile ad formats.

The deal should also bring mobile advertising to the forefront and get more people interested in the space.

Google has created a specific site to talk about the AdMob deal and its benefits here: Google’s acquisition of AdMob.

This deal marks Google’s second acquisition of a company founded by an Arab entrepreneur, the first being their September 2007 acquisition of mobile social network Zingku, that was founded by Jordanian entrepreneur Sami Shalabi in May 2006.

Search Advertising’s Double-Digit Growth In The Arab World

September 17, 2009September 17, 2009 MMM 1 Comment

As several regional reports and studies have shown, online advertising in the Arab world is pretty much still in its infancy, with it only representing around 1% of total advertising spends in the region. Search advertising which is a relatively newer form of online advertising has just started making inroads into the market over the past couple of years, and it’s interesting to have some insight into how things are looking with it, and what kind of growth it is seeing.

Google of course is the main player in the search advertising market worldwide and in the region, and according to Husni Khuffash, Google’s Country Business Manager, Google search advertising is witnessing a double-digit growth in the Arab World, despite the reports of a worldwide decline in the performance of search ads.

Meanwhile, David Sheridan, CEO, Neo Digital, commented that search ads currently consist well under 10 per cent (5-6%) of total online advertising budgets, which in turn constitute only around one per cent of the total ad spend.

Sheridan, however, agrees that search advertising is seeing a double-digit growth in the region, with Neo Digital seeing more than 10 per cent growth in online advertising based on pay per click.

In fact, he said search ads constituted 15 to 20 per cent of the total agency expenditure, with some clients spending about 10 per cent of their online budgets on Google search display ads, and between 15 and 20 per cent on text search, varying according to each client’s needs.

However, he also thinks that search ads aren’t probably the best way to advertise to a specific targeted audience, and that more specific advertising is still better placed on specific portals.

An important point he makes is that one of the main reasons why the search ad market is not so big here compared to other markets is because those are heavy e-commerce markets as opposed to the Arab region, where pay per click is more intended for lead generation and directing traffic to websites, not to drive direct sales.

This, I think, not only applies for search advertising but online advertising in general. As long as businesses don’t see the results of their online campaigns translated into conversions and revenue, their investments in online advertising in general will be limited. The only way for them to start seeing those conversions and that revenue rolling in though if for them to work on more elaborate online strategies and start venturing into e-commerce.

Most digital advertisers in the Arab region are still government, telecommunications and automotive; with smaller companies that search advertising should appeal to not being very active.

Expectations are that the search ad sector will maintain a steady growth, just like online advertising as a whole, despite the almost untapped e-commerce market in the Arab World. But, in my opinion, it will only take off hugely when the internet starts being perceived as a really important sales channel by companies.

[Via: Business 24-7]

Google Launches Egabat New Arabic Questions & Answers Service

September 8, 2009September 8, 2009 MMM 15 Comments

Google is officially announcing the launch of a new service for the Arab world, under the name Google Egabat (meaning Google Answers in Arabic), in an event now taking place in Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Dubai, UAE.

As the name suggests the product is a questions and answers service, a community-driven knowledge market site that allows users to both submit questions to be answered and answer questions asked by other users.

But unlike the now defunct Google Answers, which shut down in December 2006, where asker-accepted answers used to cost $2 to $200, Google Egabat deploys a reputation and incentive system, giving members the chance to earn points along the way, as a means to encourage participation.

While using the service, rating answers, and other tasks on the service users get to accumulate points in their account that they can use to ask questions of their own, assigning a number of those points to be transferred to the person who gives the best answer.

In parallel users also accumulate reputation points that are assigned to them depending on the good questions or answers they post on the service, according to the votes by the other users. Each user’s expertise level is based on the number of reputation points they were able to accumulate, going through nine different levels, ranging from newbie to scientist.

Upon signing up to the service users get 20 free points in their account that they can spend on asking questions and 10 points in reputation points. Each action from just visiting the site to answering to rating brings its own rewards in terms of points. The details for the points system can be found here (in Arabic).

Questions are broken down and organized by categories, sub-categories, and tags, to make them easier for people to find and access answers to.

Similar services by Google are also currently available in two other markets: Russia (since June 2007) and China (with Tianya, a Chinese community website, as Tianya Answers).

The service can be accessed through http://egabat.google.com or http://ejabat.google.com; covering both possible ways to write the word.

Google Launches Four New Arabic Editions Of Google News

September 2, 2009September 2, 2009 MMM 2 Comments

Google just announced the launch of four new Arabic editions of Google News for Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Users in these countries can now access Google News editions specific to their country and get the latest headlines in topics such as Politics, Business, Sports, Entertainment and more.

This is part of Google’s ongoing push to provide local services and more relevant information and news for users, starting with these four countries that represent more than 24 million Arabic-speaking internet users.

Like all Google News editions, these computer-generated Arabic editions aggregate headlines from thousands of news outlets around the world, group similar stories together and link directly to the original sources that publish these stories. This enables users to search for topics they’re interested in, and read a wide variety of perspectives from different sources.

It seems there are plans by Google to continue rolling out more local editions for the rest of the Arab countries in the near future.

Google Launches Google.ps Domain Name For Palestine

August 13, 2009August 13, 2009 MMM 6 Comments

Google just announced the addition of a new domain to their list of international domain names google.ps for Palestine.

The new domain will give Arabic-speaking users in the Palestinian Territories, who use Palestinian ISPs, access to Google in Arabic–and eventually, access to more locally-relevant content.

Local domain names are part of a bigger strategy for Google, they’re a first step towards making the web more accessible and relevant for users from around the world, providing local services to them wherever they happen to be.

Google has already previously launched a number of local domain names for other countries including Jordan, Morocco, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Libya among others and plans to continue doing so.

With the launch of google.ps, the total number of international Google domains goes up to more than 160.

Over 69% Of UAE Consumers Have Bought Something Online

June 4, 2009June 4, 2009 MMM 6 Comments

Google recently hosted a day for the top agencies in UAE, in an initiative to point businesses to the hotspots in online media.

In preparation for the Agency Day, Google surveyed 1,410 consumers in UAE about their purchasing behaviour, and was able to build an accurate picture of online/offline research and purchase segmentation, use of search engines and attitudes to online shopping in UAE in 2009.

The data gathered from the survey was revealed to the agencies as part of the training, aiming to stress on the importance of getting online. The results reflected the increasing sophistication of consumers in purchasing behaviors and the need for businesses to update their online presence to capture this market.

The main highlights from the UAE report are:

More than 69% of respondents have bought something online.
Amongst UAE residents, the Internet is the ‘information tool’ used most often when researching possible purchases across a range of categories including digital cameras/camcorders, mobile phones, cars as well as hotel reservations.
Search engines are the most used source of online research information (81% of respondents). Manufacturer websites (49%), Directories and local listings (27%), retailer websites (26%), and online auction websites (25%) are also very popular.
Search engines are used most for research in relation to technology (67%) and travel (48%) products.
Google is the preferred search engine in the UAE with (58% preferring google.com and 38% preferring google.ae)
In general, as a mean average across the 20 products listed in the survey, 11% of all product purchases were researched and purchased online; 28% were researched online but purchased offline; 5% were researched offline but purchased online; and 56% were researched and purchased offline.
Credit and debit cards (64% of respondents) are the most common payment method when making online purchases
74% of the UAE online users notice sponsored links, and of those who do notice them 7% almost always, 6% regularly, 45% sometimes and 22% seldomly click on them.
While one third of UAE respondents say the current economic crisis has not changed their shopping habits, an almost equal proportion say the recent financial turmoil has led to less of their shopping being done online. This may be related to the fact that many of their online purchases may have fallen more into the ‘non-essential/leisure’ categories (i.e. travel and event tickets) which people choose to cut out during difficult economic times.
In the UAE, English (76% of respondents) is by far the most popular ‘search’ language (likely to be related to the highly multinational nature of UAE society) vs. 23% preferring to search in Arabic.

Google, AT&T, Automattic and Twitter Executives Visit Iraq

April 21, 2009April 21, 2009 MMM 6 Comments

Executives from Google Inc, AT&T Inc, Twitter and other high tech companies are visiting Iraq this week in a trip organised by the US State Department.

The department, which helped arrange the April 19-23 trip, said the executives would offer ideas on how new technologies could help foster transparency, strengthen civil society and generally empower people and local groups by providing the tools for network building.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said: “As Iraqis think about how to integrate new technology as a tool for smart power, we view this as an opportunity to invite the American technology industry to be part of this creative genesis.”

Other companies represented on the trip are Howcast, a website that offers how-to videos; Meetup, a website that helps people organize, or join, local communities; the video-sharing You Tube website; Automattic/Wordpress, which makes blogging software; and Blue State Digital, which provides tools for online fundraising, advocacy and social networking.

Officials wouldn’t name the nine executives taking the trip, but they are apparently all pretty senior. They will meet representatives from the government, education authorities, techolology organisations and other groups.

[Sources: Reuters, TG Daily]
[Via: Spot On PR]

Google Ventures, Google’s New Venture Capital Fund

March 31, 2009March 31, 2009 MMM 13 Comments

Google, which has invested in many startups over the years, just announced the launch of Google Ventures, its new venture capital fund.

Google Ventures is expected to invest up to $100 million over the next 12 months. It will be overseen by David Drummond, who will continue in his role as senior vice president of corporate developing and chief legal officer at Google. Investments will be vetted by William Maris, who joined Google about a year ago, and Rich Miner, a co-founder of Android, a mobile software startup that Google acquired in 2005.

At its core, Google Ventures is charged with finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups, focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care, as well as other areas.

Google says it will mainly be tapping into the connections of its employees and its ties to the venture capital world to find promising startups.

Google Ventures has already made two investments: Silver Spring Networks, a company that makes technology to help manage electric grids, and Pixazza, which links online images with related products that can be purchased.

On another note, executives from Google have been travelling around the Arab region these past days, meeting with government officials, people from development programs and entrepreneurs in a set of private networking events.

Google Announces G-Pals Day 2009 In Palestine

March 12, 2009March 12, 2009 MMM 7 Comments

Google announced that upon invitation by the Palestine Information & Communications Technology Incubator (PICTI) and Palestinian IT Association (PITA), with support from UPP and USAID, it will be offering specialized training days in Ramallah (West Bank), aiming to spur economic development in Palestine.

The event will be held over a two day period (March 24 – 25, 2009); the first day targeted at software developers and the second at entrepreneurs.

The agenda is as follows:

Day 1: For Software Developers (March 24th 2009)

Day 1 will focus on pushing the boundaries of web applications using Google developer technologies. Google engineers and web development leaders will lead attendants through one full day of in-depth sessions on the latest Google technologies and hands-on codelabs. The day will also be about bringing brilliant developers together to share their own ideas. Registration form for Day 1

Day 2: For Entrepreneurs (March 25th 2009)
Day 2 will be full of Google product demonstrations for small or medium sized businesses to help spur innovation and entrepreneurship in the region. There will be a discussion on how to create Arabic content using online tools, how to market them and how to monetize. Furthermore there will be presentations of several tools to better manage businesses. Registration form for Day 2

The event will be held in Ramallah at the following venue:

Grand Park Hotel
Al Masyoon Heights
Rafat Road
Ramallah
Tel: +972 2 298 6194

For more information, you can visit the official site here: G-Pals Day 2009

[Via: Leaders of Tomorrow]