Hello from Tunisia
last week marked its World Press Day in Tunisia, the country that led the rush for freedom in the Arab world. We sponsored the event, hosting Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki who met with Daniel Calingaert, Freedom House's Vice President in Washington DC via an On Air Hangout on UNESCO's Google+ page.
World Press Day marks an appropriate moment to review our progress in the Middle East and North Africa. We're investing and digging deep roots. Over the past year, we have doubled our regional workforce. We have hosted g|daysreaching an estimated 12,000 entrepreneurs and developers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Our Google Media Academy has trained nearly 2,000 journalists.
Google products are going Arabic. Only about three percent of the web now is in Arabic, while more than 10 percent of the world's web population speaks it as a mother tongue. In order to encourage more local content, we have launched eight local YouTube domains and 11 local maps domains. An Egyptian who searches YouTube is no longer directed to Western videos but instead is able to access local content. We have introduced Arabic versions of Voice Search, Driving directions for Maps, and Google+.
Many magic moments have occurred in the past year. We hosted celebrity high profile hangouts with entertainer Myriam Fares and the Arab world's biggest pop star, Amr Diab. We also launched the Official Google Arabia Google+ page.
Earlier this month, two Qatar museums, Museum of Islamic Art and Mathaf, joined the Google Art Project. Egypt, the first episode of "Inside Google" aired on Al Hayat Al Youm, Egypt's number one Prime Time TV show. Egypt's very own Amr Mohamed became a global finalist in the YouTube Space Lab. And next week we will crown a national winner for the Ebda2 with Google competition to provide local entrepreneurs seed capital to start their own business kickstarting the internet ecosystem in Egypt to flourish.
This Arabization drive is producing impressive results. Google searches are up by 25 percent year on year in the region. Some 167 million YouTube videos are viewed each day in the Middle East and Africa - the second highest number in the world, behind the U.S. and ahead of Brazil. These daily views represent 112 percent increase since last October - more than double the views in just one year. An hour of YouTube video is uploaded each minute in the Middle East and North Africa. Since the launch of our local map domains, we have seen 50 percent growth in maps usage throughout the region.
Our goal is clear – to become part of the local landscape, giving people around the Middle East and North Africa access to information, preferably in their own language. For us, our contribution to UNESCO's World Press Day represents yet another strong step towards this goal.
Posted by Maha Abouelenein, Head of Communications, Middle East and North Africa
It was a perfect way to celebrate the Arab Spring. UNESCO last week marked its World Press Day in Tunisia, the country that led the rush for freedom in the Arab world. We sponsored the event, hosting Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki who met with Daniel Calingaert, Freedom House's Vice President in Washington DC via an On Air Hangout on UNESCO's Google+ page.
Labels: Culture , Google in Europe Blog , Innovation , Middle East , Tunisia
Mark Gess May 8, 2012 at 5:16 PM
I'm glad to see Google finally allowing Arab nations the ability to both search and create their own content. We're looking forward to communicating more with our brothers and sisters in the Middle East!
Thanks for your work, but I have to mention that Driving directions in not available in Egypt.
In addition to that, I can't buy apps from Google Play, while my friend can ,using scratch cards, from Apple App Store.
At the end I want to cover the need of Movies and Books for home entertaining and for work. In my work I use a lot of books and having a digital copy of them will make it very handy, and convincing publishers to deal with you won't be a hard task as they all already have the digital copies needed so no need for scanning . At home, I can't find an easy way to watch a high quality movies.
The absence of a legitimate way to get apps makes the only way to get it is piracy, and when you enter a market that depends essentially on piracy it will be hard for you to compete, so don't be late anymore.
Note from the editor: Driving directions is launched in several countries in MENA - you are right that it is not in Egypt yet.
Regarding Google Play and Android - you are right we haven't launched Android in MENA officially and Google Play is only available for Free apps across MENA but we are launching Google Play paid apps in UAE and Kuwait.
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