Yahoo has just officially acquired Maktoob, a very popular Arabic web portal that offers services including search, payments, social network, and auctions. Rumors of an aquisition have been building for months, and in the last hour they reached a head as news of an impending press conference broke. The price hasn’t been announced, but our sources say $85 million.
The MaktoobBusiness Twitter acccount notes that the deal will unite “Yahoo’s 20 million users from the Arab world with Maktoob’s 16 million”, with Vice President Ahmed Nassef stating that it will bring “a sea change in the industry.”
Up until now, Yahoo has held a weak presence in the Arab region, with no dedicated portal to speak of (though it still managed to attract millions of Arab users to its sites). The deal effectively gives Yahoo an instant foothold in the market. According to MaktoobBusiness, products will be cobranded with Yahoo and Maktoob, with the deal completing in the fourth quarter and new products rolling out next year.
However, the deal does not include a number of Maktoob’ products, including Souq (an eBay-like auction site), CashU (prepaid card payment system), Araby (search), and Tahadi MMO games. These will become part of Jabbar Internet Group, which we hear may be headed by one of Maktoob’s founders.
Maktoob launched in the late 90’s as the first free Arabic Email service provider. Since then it has grown to encompass a variety of services, including payments, gaming, search, and auctions. According to comScore, Maktoob has seen very impressive growth over the last year, growing from 6 million unique visitors in June 2008 to 21.8 million a year later. Likewise, its page views have grown from 406 million to 1.1 billion over the same time frame.
Update: Yahoo has now confirmed to acquisition on its blog:
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.
Initially, we’ll plan to introduce Arabic versions of Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, Search, and our homepage and then eventually local versions of properties like News, Sports, and Finance. We’ll also focus on creating content and services tailored to the region. No other global company has made this kind of investment in local relevance for the Arab world.
There is a big arab market.
Nice graphic Jason :)
that is good step. congrats to both companies.
Again an awesome combination for Yahoo. Good way to attract the Arab world.
“Maktoob has seen very impressive growth over the last year, growing from 6 million unique visitors in June 2008 to 21.8 million a year later. Likewise, its page views have grown from 406 million to 1.1 billion over the same time frame.”
That’s happened when Maktoob started to buy the biggest Arabic websites ..
Maktoon bought the biggest Arabic forums for each field like sport, automobile, movies, software .. etc ..
Some of websites that maktoob bought contains a lot of illegal material ( Movies and Software) , so how will yahoo deal with it ?
The deal is closed.
Great. Yahoo is tremendously expanding in all areas. Mail, Search, application for mobiles, messenger, and like these. Even though Yahoo still needs improvements, the efforts to increase the visitors and grab the Google users are appreciable. But how far the hard efforts are going to have value.?? Future has to answer.
Yahoo might enhance the Maktoob too. An extra work for Yahoo.
great… yahoo is expanding.. you know what maktoob is also a very good mail provider.
Yeah Jason! Nice graphic!
Yahoo!’s acquisition of Maktoob.com is probably the biggest Internet portal move in the Middle East by a global player since Microsoft launched its MSN franchise in the Arab world together with Egypt’s LinkdotNet and Orascom as MSNArabia in 2001. Arguably this is bigger, due to Maktoob’s market position, the capital involved and the weight of the commitment from Yahoo.
Middle East & North Africa web developer ocommunities are obviously going to be buzzing with this news for sometime to come. However, there is also hope among Arab entrepreneurs that this acquisition will confirm to big Middle East investors that Arab web ventures can succeed internationally and that the returns can be exciting.
(sorry, posted on the orginal ‘maybe story’ before I saw you posted a ‘confirmed’ one)
great news, and graphic logo, its really look awesome..
congrats to Maktoob and YahoO!
Yahoo boring website acquired another more boring website, this should be a very good news to Maktoob, actually if Yahoo offered 1 million they would sell !
for any case ; ewing2001@maktoob.com ; btw nico means in arabic apparently ‘fu* him/her’ ;
Hey wait a second.
They will provide mail accounts for the user of maktoob?
This will give yahoo a dramatically boost of email users…..300 million they got now,,,,in addition with maktoob email users almost 310 millions….
means 3% grow….
Yea, really cool graphic. Wonder where you got it from, Jason?
Good Article.
Thanks for posting
Congrats ! This is great news for the MENA region and I expect to see more eyes turning towards that space in the few years to come …
and someone will have to transliterate al that text ;)
This came as a surprise for me. I knew talks were going on. But didn’t expect it will go through. Congrats to Maktoob!!!
this reminds me of of Aron Kader comedy sketch
http://www.yout...h?v=cCF-B1Iz9zs
step to the front
yahoo want support arabic people to get more visitors and this may help to make google away for time
Finally very good deal for maktoob and yahoo
its good for maktoob website…
Congratulation maktoob and all people Arabic
It’s a good deal because of the increased international pressence.
I still wonder and have a concern about Bartz is going to deal with the patent infringement issue surrounding the previous acquisition of Blue Lithium though. So much of what Yahoo is doing is completely predicated on their targeting technology and they are leveraging it with all these new relationships. I’m concerned that if they lose use of that foundational technology or if a competitor acquires its first, we Yahoo shareholders may have a problem.
Yahoo settled with VCLK for rumored 130 million for the front end of the patents, the back end is owned by a small little company called Modavox. Everything Yahoo is doing is based on targeting and customizing content. For our sake, I hope Bartz moves fast before somone else does to own these key patents that we so need.
This is a nice move
I think Maktoob has great revenue potential for Yahoo. You can see their revenue details and community growth from 2001-2005 here:
http://www.duba...m_2001_to_2.php
Nice, By the way Maktoob is a Jordanian Famous Blogger, Not a KSA !
Peace.
“we’re committed to literally translating our winning formula for this growing market in many ways”
According to ComScore’s numbers, it looks like Maktoob should give Yahoo their winning formula.
Great move Yahoo. They need you.
Hi
This was a BIG mistake from yahoo side. If yahoo will take all maktoob websites and portals he will face problems with the law of copyrights, because maktoob has forums that provide cracks and serial numbers, it depends on illegal copies of software and movies, like the website that maktoob owns “dvd4arab.com” this website has links to download new movies in an illegal way.
also maktoob websites and portals are not connected will, each website has it’s own users and accounts, I mean if you are registered at dvd4arab.com and you want to use another maktoob website you need to create another account for this website.
thank you
Good step for YahoO !
thank u for posting
الف الف مبرووووووووك للجميع
this realy amazing now yahoo going ro acquired web site which are best
great …. good luck