According to The Wall Street Journal, Google has chosen "Egypt as its first outpost in the Arab world because it is the most populous country in the region, with 78 million people and 5.2 million Internet users. Google estimates 50 million people in the region will be online by 2009."

But there is still a lack of content in Arabic on the Internet. Google says that less than 1% of all Internet content is in English.

But I am seeing content growth as far as multinationals are concerned. In our 2006 Web Globalization Report Card, 46 of the 300 companies analyzed offered some degree of Web content in Arabic, roughly 16%. While this is low, it's up from the 10% we found in 2005.