Author Archives: Anthony Nakache

Driving growth in the Middle East

The Nest is an online store that offers curated handcrafts from Egypt, from home accessories to fashion and furniture. When the pandemic started, founders Dina and Omar had to close their physical showroom, which used to drive 90% of their sales. They listed their business details on Google Maps and Search, promoted their products online and revamped their website which, in less than a year, became their main source of revenue.

According to a new report published by Public First research agency and commissioned by Google, our products and tools in the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia helped businesses to adapt during the pandemic and helped people sharpen their skills and find jobs.

The report shows 45% of people in Egypt last year used Google Maps to find a local business and 52% of businesses in Saudi Arabia reported an increased proportion of their customers coming from online search or search advertising.

Since opening our first office in the Middle East and North Africa 13 years ago, Google has been actively supporting local businesses and developers, YouTube content creators, and publishers. Public First estimates that last year Google products like Search, YouTube, Android and Google Ads drove 12.2 billion SAR [3.2 billion USD] to the Saudi economy, 11.3 billion AED [3 billion USD] to the UAE economy and 11.2 billion EGP [600 million USD] to Egypt's economy.

Growing developers and creators

Manal, Saudi YouTube creator, shows how she tailors trousers on her YouTube channel

Manal, DIY content creator on YouTube in Saudi Arabia. Photo credit: Manal’s YouTube page

Manal, from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, has a passion for DIY in fashion and home improvement. She started her YouTube channel to share her knowledge in upcycling dresses and scarves to make trousers, and repainting her room for Ramadan. Manal’s work has inspired others, and her community often share their own versions of her designs and ask for DIY tips. When she built her channel during the pandemic, her subscribers grew by over 300%. Manal is one of many talented creators in Saudi Arabia growing their business on YouTube. In fact, the percentage of YouTube channels in Saudi Arabia making six figures or more in revenue is up more than 20% year over year. That's a sign of steady growth in Saudi Arabia’s YouTube creator community.

Founder of Lamsa, Badr Ward, stands, smiling, with his arms folded

Badr Ward, founder of Lamsa World, an Arabic educational platform in the UAE. Photo credit: Hub71

Lamsa World is an educational platform in Arabic for children. It has interactive courses in math, science, language, arts and more. Badr Ward, the Dubai-based founder, wanted to help his children watch more educational content in Arabic, which was sparse and not always engaging. Badr and his team took part in the Google Accelerator Program in Dubai last year and, with the help of mentors, tested different sign-up options and experimented with different content formats. This led to a significant increase in the website's sign-up rates and a 300% increase in Arabic content downloads.

Unlocking skills and jobs

Since its launch in 2018, Maharat min Google, Google's digital skills program in Arabic, has trained 1.5 million people in the Middle East and North Africa. And in October 2020, Google announced a $13 million USD fund for digital tools, training programs, mentorship and financial grants to support businesses and job seekers in the Middle East and North Africa during the pandemic. Following Google's mentorship program with Mercy Corps, 50% of trainees said that they found a job, accelerated their career or grew their business by hiring new staff or increasing revenue.

Google Search also played a big role in helping people in the region access information and skills last year. For example, 85% of people in the UAE said they used Search to learn a new skill.

People looked for jobs too. Every month, around 11 million women in Egypt go to Search to look for a job. In Saudi Arabia, 1.8 million people use Search to prepare for a job interview. According to the World Economic Forum, many women are contributing to the innovation coming out of the Middle East and North Africa, yet this region continues to have one of the lowest levels of female economic involvement globally.

Public First estimates there are already 85,000 Android-based developer jobs in Egypt and 50,000 in the UAE. In Saudi Arabia, the total number of developers making USD 10,000 per month on Google Play grew by 16% last year.

We are proud that people in the Middle East and North Africa are able to unlock opportunities for themselves with the help of Google products and tools. The region is young, smart and digital, and Google is committed to doing more to help entrepreneurs, local business owners, developers and content creators get the skills they need to build and grow their digital businesses.

If you want to understand more about Google's impact in the Middle East and North Africa, and the methodology behind the report, visit the links below:

Google News Showcase is launching in Ireland

Google News Showcase, our new product experience and licensing program for news, will begin rolling out with national, regional and local publishers today in Ireland. Showcase provides new ways for readers to access and understand the stories that matter to them.

In Ireland, this experience is powered by a series of licensing agreements covering more than 40 national, regional and local publications including The Irish Independent, The Irish Examiner, Connaught Telegraph, Clare Echo, Donegal Daily, Derry Now, Irish Times, Irish Mirror, The Journal,The Sunday World and more.

This image shows logos for some of our News Showcase partners in Ireland including Celtic Media Group, Clare Echo, Donegal Daily, Iconic Media Group, The Irish Times, The Journal and Reach

Some of our News Showcase partners in Ireland

News Showcase is backed by our recent $1 billion investment in news around the world and gives news organizations the ability to curate their content on Google’s News and Discover platforms, helping readers get more context about a story and connecting readers with the news that matters to them. News Showcase panels display an enhanced view of an article or articles, giving participating publishers more ways to bring important news to readers and explain it in their own voice, along with more direct control of presentation and branding.

People who click on News Showcase panels are sent directly to the publisher’s website to read the full story, driving valuable traffic and enabling publishers to deepen their relationships with readers.

People will see panels from publishers they follow in their personalized feeds, and they might also see panels from publishers they’re less familiar with, presented as options in the Google News “For You” feed and inside “Newsstand,” the discovery area of Google News.

This GIF shows examples of news stories in the News Showcase panels from some of our partners in Ireland

An example of how News Showcase panels will look with some of our partners in Ireland

More than 1,000 news publications globally have signed deals for News Showcase since last year, including in India, Germany, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Australia, Czechia, Japan, Colombia, the U.K, Austria and Argentina, with discussions underway in a number of other countries. More than 90% of the publications that have joined News Showcase so far provide local or community news.

“As the largest local media group in Ireland, we reach audiences in local communities all over the country,” says Iconic Media Group Editorial Director, Brian Keyes. “We see Google News Showcase as an opportunity to engage our audience even further with the ease of access to our latest news and sports stories. We are looking forward to other communities being informed and satisfied by the content from Iconic Media websites, expanding our footprint even further."

“It is an honor for us as a locally-owned, independent publisher to have partnered with Google News Showcase,” says Stuart Holly, editor of regional newspaper The Clare Echo. “We strive to constantly evolve and by partnering with Google, not only are we further progressing the reader experience but also we are afforded the opportunity to further invest in public interest journalism. I look forward to using the platform myself to navigate my way directly to trustworthy, interesting and interactive news feeds.”

Regional online publication Donegal Daily also welcomes the launch. "We're so excited to be able to showcase our news through Google News Showcase so we can reach an even wider audience,” says editor Stephen Maguire. "We are delighted by this new partnership and hope it will not only help to secure our reporting team but increase it and allow us to bring our local readers even more up-to-the-minute news, sport and features from Co Donegal."

As part of our licensing agreements with publishers for News Showcase, we're also paying participating news organizations to give readers access to a limited amount of paywalled content. This feature means readers will have the opportunity to read more of a publisher’s articles than they would otherwise be able to, encouraging them to learn more about the publication — and potentially subscribe.

More than 1,000 news publications globally have signed deals for News Showcase since last year, including in India, Germany, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Australia, Czechia, Japan, Colombia, the U.K, Austria and Argentina, with discussions underway in a number of other countries. More than 90% of the publications that have joined News Showcase so far provide local or community news. “As the largest local media group in Ireland, we reach audiences in local communities all over the country,” says Iconic Media Group Editorial Director, Brian Keyes. “We see Google News Showcase as an opportunity to engage our audience even further with the ease of access to our latest news and sports stories. We are looking forward to other communities being informed and satisfied by the content from Iconic Media websites, expanding our footprint even further." “It is an honor for us as a locally-owned, independent publisher to have partnered with Google News Showcase,” says Stuart Holly, editor of regional newspaper The Clare Echo. “We strive to constantly evolve and by partnering with Google, not only are we further progressing the reader experience but also we are afforded the opportunity to further invest in public interest journalism. I look forward to using the platform myself to navigate my way directly to trustworthy, interesting and interactive news feeds.” Regional online publication Donegal Daily also welcomes the launch. "We're so excited to be able to showcase our news through Google News Showcase so we can reach an even wider audience,” says editor Stephen Maguire. "We are delighted by this new partnership and hope it will not only help to secure our reporting team but increase it and allow us to bring our local readers even more up-to-the-minute news, sport and features from Co Donegal." As part of our licensing agreements with publishers for News Showcase, we're also paying participating news organizations to give readers access to a limited amount of paywalled content. This feature means readers will have the opportunity to read more of a publisher’s articles than they would otherwise be able to, encouraging them to learn more about the publication — and potentially subscribe.

An example how different News Showcase panels look with some of our partners in Ireland.

News Showcase is just one way that we are committed to investing in the future of news in Ireland. We support news publishers in the country in a number of other ways including through innovation funding, programs to support business sustainability like the Digital Growth Programme, and training for almost 2,000 Irish journalists and journalism students through the Google News Lab.

Over the coming months we’ll continue to work with our news partners in Ireland to incorporate their feedback and include more publishers in the program for the future. Google is committed to providing access to information, supporting the open web and joining in this shared responsibility to support the news ecosystem in Ireland and around the world.

Supporting News in Ireland

Google is expanding its investment in news in Ireland. We’ve signed agreements with seven Irish publishers to bring Google News Showcase, our new product experience and licensing program for news, to Ireland. We plan to roll out News Showcase to readers across the country in the coming months. 

Supported by our$1 billion global investment in news, Google News Showcase gives news publishers a new way to curate their high-quality content on Google’s News and Discover platforms, connecting their readers with the news that matters to them and giving them a deeper storytelling experience.  

In Ireland, Google has signed partnerships with publishers including regional publishing group Celtic Media, national media consortiumThe Irish Times Group and online publisher Journal Media, covering almost 40 publications and a mix of local, regional and national news organizations from across the country. 

“The Irish Times’ agreement with Google News Showcase is a welcome acknowledgement of the value of trusted news sources in modern democracies,” says Liam Kavanagh, managing director of the Irish Times. “It means titles in The Irish Times Group have more support to provide high quality, independent journalism to a wider audience.”

“News Showcase is a valuable tool in our organization's mission to provide open access to valuable journalism in Ireland,” says Adrián Acosta, the CEO of Journal Media. “Presenting headlines with meaningful context in Google News is a better news experience for the public. It builds users’ understanding of the news and the value of journalism. We are delighted to be part of this project."

“As one of the leading local news publishers in Ireland, Celtic Media Group welcomes the opportunity to be a launch partner for Google News Showcase,” says Frank Mulrennan, the CEO of Celtic Media Group.  “We see it as a real opportunity to further build our audience through the enhanced profile of the panels which then drive readers back to our publisher sites for the fuller story.  We have been impressed by the News Showcase induction programme and the ease of panel compilation for our journalists.”

More than 1,000 news publications globally have signed deals for News Showcase since last year, including in India, Germany, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Australia, Czechia, Japan, Colombia, the U.K, Austria and Argentina, with discussions underway in a number of other countries. 

Through both our services and direct funding of news organizations, Google is one of the world’s biggest financial supporters of news, and Google News Showcase is the latest investment in our ongoing commitment to support journalism around the globe. In Ireland, Google supports news publishers in the country in a number of other ways including innovation funding, programs to support business sustainability like the Digital Growth Programme, and training for almost 2,000 Irish journalists and journalism students through the Google News Initiative.