Leading Online Arabic Community Maktoob Welcomes Yahoo! Search
Back in August 2009, Yahoo! announced that it purchased Maktoob, the leading online Arabic-language community. At the time Yahoo! representatives said that Yahoo! would first launch Arabic versions of Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, and the Yahoo! homepage. Then, as time moved on, Yahoo! would launch Arabic versions of Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Finance. All this without forgetting to create content and services specially tailored for Arabic-speaking users.
At the time, Senior Vice President, Emerging Markets, Keith Nelson, commented: “We plan to join forces with the Maktoob team, the strongest in the region, to create locally relevant content, services, and programming. That’s no easy task when you consider the differences between countries like UAE, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But we’re committed to literally translating our winning formula for this growing market in many ways, including through locally-based editorial teams.”
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Yahoo! has delivered on the promise made last year – at least part of that promise. As of late last month, Yahoo! Search is live on Maktoob. As explained by Yahoo!, this is only the first step in what will hopefully be a fructuous relation between Yahoo! and Maktoob. The goal is to deliver the best of Yahoo!’s popular products and services and the best of Maktoob’s compelling local content.
“Yahoo! Search is now live on Maktoob, the leading online Arabic-language community,” announced Kaushal Kurapati, Director of Product Management, Emerging Markets, Yahoo! Search. “We encourage Arabic-speaking Internet users to try out Yahoo! Search at Maktoob. Of course, you can also go to the Maktoob home page and enter any Arabic query to search the Web. This is just the beginning of our long-term commitment to deliver relevant Arabic-language content and services to the region.”
In related news, the option to attach files up to 25MB in size to outgoing emails is out the window. You can now attach files up to 100MB in Yahoo! Mail – read all about it here.