Maktoob threathened by Google?
Gmail now available in Arabic. Maktoob's leading presence in Arabic Webmail threatened?
As AME Info, Mena Report and Strategiy report, Google’s Gmail users are now able to use an Arabic language interface for Gmail.
Maktoob had a first-mover advantage when setting up the first free Arabic web mail service in 2000 and has grown its user base to more than 4 million users. Google has over 100 million users globally, and up to recently ignored the Middle East. No local subsidiary of Google exists, and advertisers have to deal with their London representative.
The recent move of Google by extending Gmail to a RTL (right-to-left) interface and Arabic search and write capabilities makes me guessing that Google’s management must have read Madar Research reports about 20 million online users in the Middle East, and Shuaa Capital news about how much $$ is located and spent in our region. Google exists as a local search engine in most of the GCC countries and reports claim that +15 million searches on Google.com are coming from the Arabic region daily, so they clearly have woken up, right?!
The question now is weather Arabic users will change their email usage habits, as they have already adapted Google.ae and other local search interfaces? Will Google actively go after Maktoob.com and other Arabic mail providers? The fact that Google for the first time publishes a press release on ME news sites like AME Info, Strategiy and Mena Report undermines Google’s intentions.
There is also rumor on many web master blogs that Google will provide a license scheme of its Gmail application to large web portals to take over their Mail application (like it has been doing with its Search API for a long time). Imagine how easy it will become for any web portal if Google starts running their systems: Gmail will provide the email interface (of cours with unlimited space, AJAX components, Arabic RTL support), GTalk the phone/video conferencing, GSearch the internal search ala Google.com quality, hosting and mirroring via GSpace and all the other Google gadgets from Google Labs. Only editorial quality to be delivered by the online publishers - which makes me thinking that this is what the publishers’ core business should be about in the first pace, or?
So let’s see if the big ‘G’ is taking on the big ‘M’ and how the Arabic user will respond. And you, dear read, can respond with your comments on this blog, but in English please 
. Thx for stopping by, says Martin.
Information on Gmail:
Gmail users who speak Arabic will benefit from an interface in their native language, more than 2 gigabytes of free storage, and powerful search. Google will continue offering more Gmail storage over time. Gmail also includes other enhancements including free POP access, virus protection and automatic forwarding, and support for most web browsers with a basic HTML version. Launching these interfaces demonstrates Google’s continued focus on delivering innovations in the user experience. Google has designed these interfaces to expertly handle both “right-to-left” (RTL) languages as well as traditional languages that read left to right. These directionality controls allow for a better compose experience in a RTL language.
Information on Maktoob:
aktoob was founded in the year 2000 as the world’s first free Arabic/English Web-based Email service, offering users the ability to receive and compose Email in either language, regardless of the operating system. The network of sites represents Maktoob.com the leading Arab portal with a leading market share of 4 million active users, and a range of companies and sites specialized in business and ecommerce in the region. Maktoob’s main mission is to maintain and grow its position as the largest Arab community site by constantly offering its users a unique experience and by providing them with new services and products
comments
Samih
June 8th, 2006 at 7:32 amWell, I don’t want to downplay Google but I don’t think we should also panic unecessarily. When MSN Arabia entered the market many years back people told me Maktoob would disappear but the opposite happened and Maktoob became stronger and stronger.
Although the email at Maktoob today is the number one section, Maktoob is no longer dependant on email only and is growing its other services and group aggressively. Today Maktoob is stronger than ever and we have been anticipating Hotmail or Yahoo or Google to do an Arabic interface for years but they were late. We have a lot of things to be announced soon and our growth today is unprecedented in the region. Wait for our surprises!
Hana
June 8th, 2006 at 1:25 pm“So let’s see if the big ‘G’ is taking on the big ‘M’ and how the Arabic user will respond.”
What big ‘M’? I have literally asked a 100 different young online-savvy Arabs here if they heard of Maktoob. None of them did. No one even knows what profits they make, other than “we are profitable,” and their souq.com had a reported $2 million in transactions, but how much of that goes into their pockets?
The big ‘G’ has the resources to take on anyone, including the joke that is the LINKdotNET-run MSN Arabia, should they cross paths.
Martin Diessner
June 10th, 2006 at 11:23 amThanks for the comments - both from Hana (Auto Middle East) and Samih (CEO of Maktoob.com Group).
To be honest, I agree with Samih that email as a single profit generator is most likely the wrong bet for anyone running a portal, and diversification into other areas is key.
However, so far Maktoob.com’s traffic remains strong by Email, Chat and Forum - and (quality) content is still weak @ Maktoob compared to dedicated news and other information sites in the Middle East.
Google has the power to utilize their Global reach, technology, bandwidth and storage & search capacity in a way that gets my internal monoplistic alarm bells ringing, but I wouldn’t want to panic either.
I strongly believe that content (text/image/video, user generated or editorial) and technology differentation for any publisher network is essential and key for the success to survive - and especially content will allow you to be a Google friend and not an enemy. Look at Flickr that was bought by Yahoo for 15 million US$ simply for the reason that it had its images properly tagged.
I hope and wish to Maktoob and everyone in this region that they don’t fall asleep again (like so many times in the past, see Arabia.com
and focus on content and technology to survive and to be at the top of the game!
The simple rule came from Nike and could have also come from Google - they just launched spread sheets, next Word, then Browser, then operating system, what else?: JUST DO IT !
What ever...
June 10th, 2006 at 3:57 pmHana…couple of comments…
1- I doubt that you asked 100 people about maktoob cause i dont think anybody has the time to do that
2- what pisses you off is that maktoob is not announcing how much is going to their pockets?????????? is that what makes sense to you????what if maktoob made all the investment in tech and content and they couldnt get advertising cause the market is just not big ?????
3- “Google has the resources to take everything”…remember that google came after Yahoo (whose resources at that time could take any one) and gues what?????yahoo is now working with Ebay to run at the same speed as google….hey come on be more ambitious….technology is not expensive…you just need (1) some one who is aggressive(wants to DO IT) (2) vision and understanding of the society (sure not some one sitting in San Fransisco or mountain View planning to meet the needs of a some one in Saudi or UAE)(3)proper investment…I think maktoob has 2 and 3 and lets wait to c if they have 1…
4- come on $2 mil worth of transactions in 7 months is something impressive for a WEBSITE only in UAE…you gotta give it some credit
5- Finally, we have to face it…Arabs doesnt have enough confidence in their own potential…We are always impressed with any thing comming from outside and we dont support our own potential…what ever maktoob or any other portal inthe region do there will be some one who Says ” come on they are small and they cannot compete” …
dotone
June 11th, 2006 at 8:38 amIt’s not that bad! Again this is not about just the language pack. Tackling the arab audience means signing up for more arabized adsense subscriptions! But again, adding a language to an app personalization settings does not mean invading a whole market(ME)!
Being a google/gmail fan, I still say Maktoob can do it better understanding the Arabs better, after all an apps usability is broken after the change of language and text-direction, it’s just more than that! Or better yet said, google might acquire Maktoob? And get the 4,000,000 arab account?
Martin Diessner
June 11th, 2006 at 1:34 pmMy question would be (to Samih), how many of the 4 million Maktoob.com users are active? How clean is the database?
I think that is the biggest potential right now for Maktoob.com to utilize on their current strength (user base) and turn that with combined technology and content into revenue streams that will last.
Dotone I agree the cultural understanding is important, however Yahoo (with its Italian and Indian office handling the ME) has done pretty well - first free email provider in the ME and 35% of all web traffic still on Yahoo.com.
What amazes me is that Google (once being run by two 27 year old Standford Phd students out of a garage in Mountain View) has now so much power (potentially) to really take over. Let’s hope that their mission statement ‘to organize the world’s information’ combined with their corporate (internal) policy of ‘not doing anything evil‘ will be followed.
Samih
June 11th, 2006 at 2:44 pmMy answer to Hana is simple. If we were not profitable then Abraaj the leading private equity firm in the middle east wouldn’t have invested with us. You will also hear news very soon of a global player investing with us!
As for the brand recognition I did the excercise myself and asked 10 people . 7 of them have heard of maktoob. I really doubt that you asked 100 people and they don’t know maktoob and if you di dthey probably have never used the Internet!
My answer to Martin is that I am not going to give any numbers so people will not doubt them. We are working on an external Audit for our numbers and then everybody will believe the numbers. One thing I want to say is that our numbers are growing and the latest acquistions we have made have strengthened our numbers tremendously.
Martin Diessner
June 15th, 2006 at 8:11 amOn a seperate note: Google is launching Google News in Arabic.
Check This link: AME Info
More competition…
What ever...
June 29th, 2006 at 7:11 pmHehe, I study in a college (marketing, hurrah!), and no one here has heard of Maktoob either. I found it because I go through ameinfo.com once in a while. Where did you do your survey, Samih? At your office building? Hehe