Google’s focusing a lot on some international markets as of late, including China, South Korea, and India. But those countries are grouped together in Asia, and this latest expansion comes in the Middle East; Google opened a regional office in Cairo.
This comes only a few days after the search engine company opened a new research and development center in Tel Aviv. If not for political and religious issues, one might almost imagine that the same construction crews could have been working on both buildings.
Yet Nikesh Arora, the president of Google’s operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), did describe the region as a whole when he was quoted by Trade Arabia. (An acronym you’ll need to know is MENA, which stands for the Middle East and North Africa.)
“MENA is a region with 300 million people, speaking the same language,” said Arora. “We hope our products, and the Internet as a whole, will bring useful and beneficial tools to our Arabic users. We can see potential for industries like tourism and travel which are important to Egypt’s economy.”
That’s all very sweet-sounding stuff – typical Google benevolence. But, lest you think that the new regional office is nothing more than a symbol, Arora also pointed out one thing his company hopes to gain from the region (while naming a couple of other “nice” aspects): “we can draw from the highest quality talent and further help our users find the information they’re looking for, and at the same time, help local and regional businesses succeed,” stated Arora.
